


No Man's Land

by AlleycatAngst



Series: The Uncanny Valley [3]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, But Chloe's gonna finish what Kamski started, Elijah Kamski Being Elijah Kamski, Gavin Reed is Bad at Feelings, Gavin fights RK900, Gavin kidnaps Kamski, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Interrogation, Kamski Test (Detroit: Become Human), Road Work Ahead, Sequel, Serial Killer, casefic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2020-06-25 02:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 98,255
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19736479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlleycatAngst/pseuds/AlleycatAngst
Summary: Sequel to Uncanny ValleyTwo years after the uprising, the streets of Detroit are still restless. Eighteen months have passed since Fowler's corruption scandal and faith in the DPD is as low as ever. Gavin is trying to make his partnership with Reese work, but the RK900 isn't making it easy.Jericho's leaders are distant, Connor isn't returning anyone's calls, and Elijah Kamski's secrets are starting to catch up with him.*COMPLETE*





	1. Control

The holding cell was built to hold four men, but Elijah Kamski had the privilege of having the little box of concrete all to himself. To compensate, the rest of the cells outside were bristling with men. Every other bed was full, and the sight of him relaxing in his bed with his hands laced behind his head, was causing a stir. Thugs slapped their hands and fists against the solid transparent walls, shouting obscenities at him through the holes made for them to breath.

“Yo Kamski, I’m gonna fuck you up!”

“Cyberlife ruined my goddamn life!”

“You a dead man, mother _fucker_.”

Dozens of voices pulled together by a common target. They blamed him for the lives they had wasted. They barked like dogs, scrabbling at their bars, too stupid to accept that the walls wouldn’t come down and they were utterly powerless.

And still they pounded and focused on him, a prisoner in the same prison.

How utterly predictable.

A camera focused on his cell, covering every inch of the space, the three white concrete walls and the concrete floor. He took a deep breath and cleared his mind, let the noise flow through him. He ignored his senses, even the darkness behind his eyelids, turned grey by the industrial lighting. Sensory detail was useless to him.

He drifted, waiting. He wasn’t just a man. He was well over five hundred billion dollars, with rabid lawyers and connections that could raze this building to the ground the second he walked out the front door. He would be out of the station by this time tomorrow with a public apology and possibly a gift bag for the inconvenience. It didn’t matter what they had found.

Nothing really mattered in the end, not in the face of five hundred billion dollars.

A polite knock on his cell door pricked his attention. He looked up to see a young officer, a human by the scruff of beard patching his cheeks. The name ‘Wilson’ had been embroidered across his chest. “You have a phone call,” he said.

Elijah raised himself up on his elbows. “From who?” he asked.

“Your emergency contact.”

He frowned at the officer, and then with exaggerated patience repeated, “Who?”

“Stern?” the officer said, turning more uncertain with every passing second. “Amanda Stern? She’s the only name on the list your lawyer gave us.”

Elijah lowered himself back onto the bed. “I’m not interested,” he said.

Wilson lingered. “You want me to take a message?”

“I wasn’t aware the police could be hired as secretaries,” Elijah said, closing his eyes. “No. I don’t want you to take a message.”

He didn’t hear anything else, letting himself drift again. But he couldn’t clear his mind. Amanda’s face appeared there, her face frowning in consternation her eyes sparkling with disapproval. She was pervasive. If she was now hacking his lawyers’ emails and the police station’s phone lines…

“Hey! Kamski! I’m going to fuck your bitch ass up!”

“I know you can hear me!”

He blocked out the noise firmly and focused on Amanda. If she was going to invade his concentration, he could at least control where she went—Control was always the first step, she had taught him that.

And her voice—it was far too easy to recall, the husky humor, the playful lilt just on the edge of warning.

_“What are you going to do without me?”_

_“Better.”_

###

December 19th 2016

3:15 pm

There were no records of their first meeting, the genesis of what would become Cyberlife, but he could remember it so clearly.

Elijah Kamski had never really been to office hours at the university before, but he imagined that they weren’t supposed to be like this. For one, Professor Amanda Stern’s office wasn’t a quiet, sober place filled with books and papers.

Instead it was filled with plants that overflowed their pots, vines spilling through the blinds and bookcases. Everything seemed to be entangled in cheerful chaos, everything touching, crowding each other for domination in a tiny, cluttered room.

And dozens of pictures crowded the office, their subjects staring down at him. Many of them were previous students. There was something… possessive about the pride with which each photograph was presented, and the arm she kept around the subjects.

Elijah focused his attention on the woman in front of him. Her mouth was full of tuna-fish and her glasses glimmered in the fluorescent lights. She held her sandwich up. For some reason he couldn’t look away from it. A glob of tuna and mayonnaise threatened to break free of the bread and lettuce and drop onto her desk, right on top of the booklet with his name printed on the front. The exam with a clear, bold 0% branded on the corner.

“Are you sure I can’t interest you in a bottle of water?” she asked after she had swallowed. “Or a soda? I keep plenty in here for the students who drop by.”

 _Drop by_. Elijah did not _drop by_.

“You can’t fail me this semester,” he said bluntly rather than tell her, yet again, that he didn’t want anything.

She put the sandwich down on the fresh-printed booklet. That paper had cost him only a dollar out of the campus library, but he twitched to snatch it away. He took a deep breathe. Control. Control was the first step. Stern was on a power-trip. The best way to irk her would be to not react, to play the submissive dog she wanted him to be. He had met teachers like her before, that wanted to lay some kind of claim on his work, on him. He didn’t care for their brand of sadism, but he could be whoever they wanted him to be, if it got him what he wanted.

They tried to use him, tried to climb on his shoulders.

But they were all just stepping stones.

“Attendance is mandatory in my class,” she said. “It’s on the syllabus.”

“Attendance isn’t a measure of anything except the ability to tell time.”

“Are you saying you can’t tell time, then?”

He resisted the urge to close his eyes and breathe deeply. He had been doing so well, had even been meeting her dark eyes for almost a full minute now.

At his icy silence, she smiled and leaned back, letting him off the hook. “So then how was I going to meet the elusive Mr. Kamski?” she asked. “You refused every invitation I extended to you for the past three months. You didn’t come to class, you didn’t respond to my emails. I must say I was half convinced you weren’t a real person until five minutes ago. I’m almost tempted to ask to see your ID… in fact…”

She raised an eyebrow and beckoned at him with two fingers.

“Are you serious?”

“Humor me,” she said.

“I’m trying,” he muttered, but from his pocket, he drew his student ID. She leaned forward to take it from him, but he quickly dropped it onto the desk in front of her.

“Well,” she said, holding the card up with two fingers, “If it’s a fake it’s a very good one. Seventeen years old. I never would have guessed from your work.”

“I did all the coursework,” he said, tapping the desk inches from that blue book he had spent his morning filling with elegant software analysis and philosophical hypothesis. “You want me to hand-write that report out right now? I can. Give me any piece of homework, any exam or quiz and I can do it right here in front of you.”

She placed his ID onto the desk in front of her but didn’t slide it back. “This,” she said, tapping the booklet, “is astonishing. It’s groundbreaking, and the data-stamp on the file puts the very first word as written exactly eight hours ago. That would raise a number of flags from any other professor, with any other student. But I’ve been told to let you work however you wish to Mr. Kamski. If I didn’t know the Dean, I would say he was scared of you.”

There was a question in her eyes. Elijah didn’t care to discover what it was. “Is that why you failed me then? You want my work? You want to publish that? Do it. You can leave my name out of it. I have no interest in AI.”

She sat back, the smile dropping suddenly, like a mask falling away. “I failed you because I have failed eight other students before you who never came to class. Eight other men and women paid their fees, who got into this university, lived their lives with that conscious decision, and faced the consequences of it. Why should I cheapen their blood, sweat, and tears for you?”

“Because I’m smarter,” he said quietly, confidently.

She nodded. “Maybe you are. But intelligence is its own natural advantage. I’d understand stupidity as a far better reason to overlook this lapse in judgement and respect.”

“I respect you,” he said. “I read everything you published before I took your class. I wouldn’t have taken it if I didn’t respect you.”

She frowned and tilted her head. “Why take this class if you don’t want to work in AI? It isn’t the kind of course that people take for fun.”

“Because it’s the most challenging course on the curriculum. I wanted to learn from the best,” he paused, then amended with the sudden need to be cruel and correct, because the best wouldn't be at the University of _Colbridge_. “The best available.”

“And that’s why you failed,” she said promptly, “because you didn’t learn from me, Mr. Kamski. You learned from a computer. You learned from worksheets and formulas. I can’t pass you, because you didn’t take my class.”

“I did the work,” he said, leaning forward gripping the edge of her desk as if he had to hold it still. “You just said it was groundbreaking, you _just said—_ ”

“Take Dodge, or Kim, or any other professor of AI here,” she interrupted. “They’ll give you whatever you ask for. I won’t. And I don’t care what strings you try to pull, I will never pass you.”

“Then it was pointless to come here.”

She shrugged. “If you say so.”

He stood.

He half-meant it as a bluff. He didn’t want to take one more semester more than he had to. The failing grade was a blemish on his record, one he couldn’t let stand. He should never have taken AI anyway. He was going where the money was. Nanotech. Bio-Chemistry. But he had, and now Amanda Stern’s failing grade was stuck to his record like a piece of gum, harder and harder to chip away the longer he let it stay there.

Professor Stern didn’t blink as he strode to the door. “Don’t forget your ID,” she said calmly, and held it up as he stalked back. He tried to swipe it from her fingers, but she had a strong grip on the slip of plastic.

“If you had come to my class,” she said calmly, softly, as though even in this room, alone, her words had to be kept just between the two of them. “You would know that learning from a computer is an exercise in vanity. It answers only the questions you ask.

“A computer will never encourage you to find your own line of thought or challenge you. So go live in your room, Mr. Kamski, and listen to the echoes of other men’s brilliance, because once all those grades you care so much about are lined up on that piece of paper you think matters, it’s likely that you’ll contribute nothing more to society, to the world, than another empty room.”

She let go and he pulled away sharply.

“I’ll take Dodge,” he bit out at her.

He had hoped to see her disappointment, but she had just picked up her sandwich again and didn’t even look up at the door as he pulled it closed.

###

The cell’s lock disengaged with a dull percussion, breaking him out of his memory. As soon as his arm moved from his eyes, the light burned into his retinas.

Amanda was banished, and in this brightly lit cell which smelled of bleach and sweat, he wondered what would have happened if he had signed up for Dodge that next semester, if he had never gone to her classes in a foolish attempt to prove her wrong.

The course of history would have changed forever.

And he wouldn’t be here right now.

A dark shape lit against the backdrop cleared into the features of Detective Gavin Reed in a dark sweatshirt, rough leather jacket and over-washed jeans. His short dark hair was greasy, his hazel eyes tinged red and ringed with shadows. He looked more like a junkie icer than a police detective. “Rough night?” Elijah asked. “Isn’t it a little early to be celebrating?”

“Come on,” Reed growled.

“Will my lawyers be present?” Elijah asked, swinging his legs over the side of his cot but not standing. The jumpsuit he had been given was short around the ankles, tight at his shoulders. Twenty years ago he might have been a scrawny teenager in Amanda Stern’s office, but he was powerful now, strong, a presence in any room he was in, the way that Amanda had taught him.

“They’re on their way.”

Elijah nodded and stood, holding out his hands for Detective Reed to cuff. His wrists were bruised, the parallel lines of trauma from the ridged shackles were still vivid on his pale skin. He should spend more time outside.

He added it to his schedule. He’d start tomorrow.

“You’ll be back!” one of his jail-mates bellowed from across the corridor, slapping his harm against the door of his cell. He had managed to get his hand through one of the ventilation holes, scraping skin from the base of his thumb. Red blood streaked the glass. “You better look out, Kamski! You _better_ be scared!”

“Why’d you kill them?” Reed asked quietly, his gruff voice cutting straight through the rising howls of the inmates outside. He took the crook of Elijah’s arm to guide him around the doorway, and Elijah controlled the urge to jerk away from the touch. It burned, but he was in control. He was… always in control.

Instead, he took a deep breath and sighed it out. “No comment.”

###


	2. Coffee and Corpses

November 11th 2040

6:09 AM

Gavin stepped out of his car and hunched his shoulders against the biting February wind. Once outside, the doors closed automatically and pulled back onto the road, heading for the nearest parking garage to clear the street. There wasn’t much point, there were barely any people outside this early in the morning, especially with three police cars warning away pedestrians. The lights glared in the early-morning darkness, a jarring reminder that he had to clear the anger and tiredness out of his thoughts and work.

He and Trevago had fought last night. It had been a bad one, and then he had to sleep and she didn’t, so now, like fucking always, they were on unequal footing and he had to catch up.

He curled his gloved hands into fists inside his pockets, already cold, as he caught sight of Detective Reese standing in front of the banner of projected police-tape. The hulking android looked around easily, curiously inspecting the shoulder-high snow barriers and the frost gathering at the edges of the empty shop windows. Reese could probably tell him the temperature to the degree, but the way he stood in the open air, unaffected by the icy wind blowing through his synthetic hair and ruffling the edges of his light-weight blue suit, betrayed what he was: a being that didn’t feel cold or heat or pain.

Catching sight of Gavin’s approach, Reese held out a steaming cup of coffee. “Happy Veteran's Day, Detective Reed.”

Detective Reed. Eighteen months, and Gavin was _still_ Detective Reed to Reese. He waved a dismissive hand before taking the paper cup. His cotton gloves slipped against the carboard, but Reese held it steady until Gavin found a grip. It was going to be one of those days that Reese treated him like a clumsy fucking child.

“Thanks,” he muttered as Reese fell into step at his side, cutting through the banner of light that marked the first perimeter of the crime scene. “How’d you get here so fast?”

“A member of the network found the scene about two hours ago, and once I got here, I called it in.”

Reese’s network of androids was widespread and pervasive. Gavin wasn’t going to argue that it was useless, not when they closed cases at three times the speed of the other human-android partnerships in the station. Their witnesses were more cooperative, their information more reliable, and their interrogations more fruitful with Reese feeding off a database of a hundred android’s information and processing power.

What pissed Gavin off was that dispatch had called him to the scene, not his damn partner. He forced the indignity of that away. It was a miracle that Reese still wanted to work with him at all. He owed Gavin absolutely nothing.

“The android called you directly?” he asked instead. “Not the police?”

“Can you blame her?”

Gavin winced. Right. The clusterfuck last year was still making ripples in Detroit. Their department had its own damn Wikipedia page detailing exactly how their fearless captain had pulled the whole damn district into a criminal organization of android butchery and class A drugs.

“Oh. Yeah. Figures,” Gavin nodded, forcing away the pang of guilt. He and Reese still hadn’t talked about Captain Fowler or the network, or… anything. Reese dodged his calls, and while they were at work, there was always something easier to talk about. He took a sip of his coffee, and only because they were at a goddamn crime scene did he manage to keep the liquid in his mouth. It was at first too hot, and then far _far_ too sweet.

He could feel his teeth instantly weaken in the onslaught of sugar. He glanced up at Reese, half expecting a grin from the android, playing a rookie prank when it was too early in the morning and he was _really_ not fucking ready to play games.

But Reese met his eyes earnestly, a wince of sympathy on his own face. “I did it wrong,” he said instantly. “I’m sorry, I watched Lieutenant Anderson make his coffee yesterday, and I thought—”

“No,” Gavin said gruffly. “No, it’s… it’s fine. It’s perfect.”

He raised the cup at Reese and took a deliberate sip, fighting back the urge to let the syrup simply fall back over his lips. Syrup. Fuckin’ _syrup_. How was Anderson _alive_? How did the old man have any fuckin’ _teeth?_

Gavin met the android’s cool grey eyes as he forced another sip down his throat to prove that it was fine. Reese snorted. “You don’t have to humor me, Detective Reed. Really, I can take the criticism, or I’m just going to keep making you coffee like that.”

“Good,” Gavin said stubbornly, swallowing with effort “Because I fucking love it.”

“You know that I know you’re lying.” The light humor dropped away from Reese’s tone, replaced by a warning edge, but Gavin had committed now.

“Now I’m glad there’s a reason your polygraphs aren’t admissible,” he said. “Looks like your equipment is on the fritz.”

Reese’s smile was gone completely now. “Fine,” he said.

They walked to the second perimeter in silence.

The second perimeter stretched across a narrow brick alleyway, monitored by an android in a bright yellow vest. As her blue eyes scanned over them, Gavin wrinkled his nose against the stench of sewage and mold. The air was slightly warmer here, and no snow had managed to stick on the ground. A skyrail sat over the alley, this would have been a good place for homeless transients to take shelter during the night.

This was a good place to dump a body and disappear. No footprints, and an easy escape, but someone must have seen something.

“So what’s with the double perimeter?” he asked as the android monitor gave them a quick nod and stepped aside to let them past the alley entrance. “We land a famous corpse or something?”

Reese shook his head. “Minimal personnel only. CSI already mapped the scene, so they’ll hang back until we’re done and then they’ll take the victims to Headquarters.”

“Victims? Plural?” Reed frowned. “Dispatch said one.”

“It’s complicated,” Reese said as they approached a dumpster cast into silhouette by a police-issue floodlight. “Did you look at the file dispatch sent you?”

“No,” Gavin said, craning his neck forward to see what the floodlight captured just before they turned the corner. “I didn’t check the scanner when I— Oh _fuck_ that.”

“You should have looked at the file on the way over,” Reese said reproachfully as Gavin stared at the corpse leaned up against the side of the dumpster. “I tried to warn you."

Reed ignored him and crouched carefully at the victims' side. The human’s face had already started to rot away, but the cybernetic eyes pushed into her sockets were just as bright and clear as any living person, as blue as the Thirium that powered them, encoding, decoding, and recoding the constant flow of data that should have been rushing through an android’s parts and processors.

The torso casing was an android, but the human organs were hard to miss—sticky, limp, misshapen lumps of flesh melded into the wiring with precision. Lungs lay in the center of the plating, nested inside coils of wire and circuitry and pressing up against the casing. Gavin could see that the hands were human too, the forearms android. The pieces were fitted together, almost seamlessly.

“You run the Thirium and tissue yet?” Gavin asked, his voice hoarse.

“I thought it best to wait for you,” Reese said.

Gavin flicked his fee hand in an invitation to _go on_ and Reese nodded, reaching forward to pull the chest plate aside and touch the human parts first. Lungs, face, hands. His hands were deft and as he reached up to delicately lick the tip of his finger, Gavin looked away. He was never going to get used to that.

“From what I can tell it’s one human,” he said. “A young female, early twenties, she’s been dead for over two days. I don’t think the criminal database—"

He frowned. “No. Never mind. I found her,” he corrected himself, “Jessica Gallager. Twenty-three. Arrested two years ago as part of the deviancy riots. She marched with Markus and Josh at the last one, a graduate student at Colbridge.”

Gavin nodded, thumbing the name into his phone as Reese turned his attention to the mechanical parts “One android too,” the android said. “At least… the serial numbers match and the Thirium has the same encoding—”

He faded into silence, but his eyes were still flickering from side to side, taking in a flood of information. When the silence had stretched on too long, Gavin elbowed his partner. Hey,” he said. “Reese? You okay?”

The android let go of the body, shaking his head. “Fine,” he said. “There was just… a lot. She’s been tortured. Her Thirium is… flooded with information. There’s no firewall, no filter.”

“You think someone stuck her with an InSurger?”

Reese wiped the back of his hand across his mouth, a curiously human tic of discomfort and disgust. “Probably,” he said. “I just… there’s barely any information I can read there. It’s all corrupted.”

“That doesn’t narrow down an ID… You picking up any,” Gavin twitched his fingers at his temple. “leads?”

“It’s difficult to say,” Reese said. “I’m pushing the serial numbers through the network, but since the sentience outbreak, it has become harder to inventory androids. There’s no history of credit. No history of ownership. No… provenance.”

Gavin rubbed at his right leg absently, feeling the metal and plastic through his jeans. Eighteen months after the attachment and it still felt strange. Everyone said he was supposed to have adjusted by now, but he could still feel the weight of the prosthetic tugging at his flesh, and they still hadn’t managed to tie pain into the faux-nerves, only pressure and heat sensitivity.

Staring at the Frankenstein creation in front of him, he felt his stomach roll, the too-sweet coffee threatening to come back up his throat.

No blood, and as far as he could tell, no spilled Thirium.

“Any fingerprints?” he asked, handing his coffee to Reese and pulling a pair of gloves from his jacket.

“None,” Reese said quietly. “But that doesn’t necessarily point to an android.”

Gavin shook his head. “We better fucking hope it’s not an android. Can you imagine the kind of paranoia--”

He reached out and lifted the woman’s hair to see the smooth seam of flesh-to-metal at their jaw. “But it looks…. this is practice, right? No way the son of a bitch hasn’t had some trial and error to get here.”

Reese’s head turned slightly as he considered the body, his gaze flickering from joint to joint on the victim. “Hard to say. The killer certainly has impressive anatomical knowledge, both mechanical and medical. We’re looking for someone with a lot of dedication to every aspect of their work.”

“A perfectionist. My favorite kind of asshole.” Reed said, letting the locks of black hair fall back down. “So… what are we thinking here? Art project, science experiment, political statement, or... _really_ overcomplicated double murder?”

Reese shook his head. “Someone with this knowledge and skill would _know_ this exercise was pointless,” he said, his voice fading with uncertainty. Gavin didn’t often see his partner at a loss.

The android’s tone rose again, this time in frustration, pointing out various parts of the body. “The optic nerves were removed, excess tissue taken to soften the shock on the lungs on implant. There’s a lot of care here to transplant organs and parts when they must have _known_ that their subjects were long dead. What were they trying to accomplish?”

“If you understood a motive here,” Gavin said. “I think _that_ would be a real problem.”

Reese shook his head. “There’s something else,” he said quietly.

Gavin tore his eyes from the body. Reese looked pained. “What?”

The android was looking up at the wall above the body, his gaze fixed on the metal. Gavin followed his gaze. A sheet of forensic plexi-gram stretched across the dumpster, preserving and revealing the words written above the mangled body.

Under the glaring spotlight, the lines had been difficult to see.

_I AM RA9._

The script was elegant, easy to read, the serifs finished with precise lines. Someone had tried to mix Thirium and human blood, resulting in a black, speckled mixture, curdled plasma and over-oxidized metal.

Gavin squinted at the lines, tracing the edges with his eyes. It hadn’t been a stencil, there were clear fades where the blood had started to dry on whatever had been used to make the marks, and the killer had to refresh the ink. A brush? A finger?

“Ah,” Gavin drew away to stand beside Reese, looking down at the cold, fragmented remains, and the message scrawled above it. “Well… That’s probably not good.”

###


	3. Test

Taking shallow breaths to avoid smelling the Detective, Elijah left his cell willingly. The short walk to the interrogation room was overly familiar now. He had been in and out of it three times, never allowed much rest.

He was getting sick of ‘no comment.’ It surely must be coming up for twenty-four hours, and if the lawyers were doing their job, making hell, no charges would have been pressed.

They were running out of time and ways to hold him.

He waited patiently outside the cell as Reed closed it behind him and fell into step beside the detective, subtly stretching his back and legs as much as he could. He had missed much of his daily routine, the carefully balanced schedule. He refused to eat the microwave-scalded hot-pockets and greasy bags of vending-machine food the jail provided, a completely legal form of torture.

Only one warden stood guard, and he nodded to the Detective while managing to keep his face turned away from Elijah, as if afraid to look. Elijah's lips twitched. A scared little rabbit holding the keys to caged wolves.

He walked ahead of Reed, out into the long, low concrete corridor. There were more police here and they moved out of his way, tired eyes tracking his progress. He rolled his shoulders, feeling the echoes of power.

“Reed?”

The Detective’s grip on his bicep turned bruising, yanking Elijah to a stop. “Does she ever fucking _sleep?_ ” Reed muttered under his breath before he turned to face his superior officer.

“Captain,” he said. Kamski turned as well, curious to see what the Captain would make of the Detective’s disheveled, unprofessional appearance.

His hopes were raised as he took in the Captain’s appearance. She stood like a drill sergeant, an inimitable example of order among the chaos. Her gold-black name tag read ‘Hunter’ but he knew that already. This precinct had a reputation, one that his lawyers could no doubt leverage with the public.

Captain Hunter stood at the edge of the break room a sheaf of folders and a tablet tucked against her side. She could have been an android—there was not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle on her clean-pressed suit. Maybe she was—the androids were creating their own faces now, and most elected to remove the LED from their temples.

Even Elijah, their creator, had trouble seeing the difference these days.

“What are you doing here?” the Captain asked sharply. “I took you off rotation.”

“I’m just turning in my statement, sir,” Reed replied. “Reese and Holden want to interrogate Kamski one more time before they officially charge him.”

“Since when do Detectives escort prisoners from holding?” she asked. “There is a chain of command, Reed, and you’ve been taken off this case. Don’t tell me I have to revoke your security clearance.”

“Everyone’s working double shifts,” Reed said. “There was no one on the log. I thought I’d just get him to Reese and Holden before the press and the protesters wake up.”

Captain Hunter glanced back to the bullpen and briefing room, where journalists had started camping. The holo-plex walls had been turned opaque in a weak attempt to stop them from distracting the officers, a temporary measure at best, and utterly useless if any one of them saw Elijah in cuffs standing out in the open. She moved subtly to stand between Elijah and the line of sight to the reporters. “And then you’re going home?” she asked.

“Yes sir.”

The captain nodded. “Good.”

“Yes sir.”

The order and dismissal were clear, but Hunter and Reed stayed where they were. The Captain’s eyes narrowed. “Have you been drinking?” she asked, her voice fading. The tone could almost have been mistaken for concern if not for the

“No sir.” Reed said immediately.

Elijah snorted. It was a blatant lie, the Detective walked in an aura of cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol—so strong that Elijah’s eyes could water from the pungent odor. The captain’s eyes flickered to him, and he controlled his expression. She nodded. “I want to see you in my office before you leave.”

“Yes sir.”

Reed took the crook of his elbow and pulled him towards the interrogation room, away from the captain. He went willingly the last dozen steps to the small windowless room. “You’ve been taken off my case?” Elijah asked, intrigued.

“Shut the fuck up.”

“An innovative approach to interrogation,” he muttered drily as the detective laid a hand on the biometric scanner and the door slid open for them, revealing an empty concrete box, but for a table, two chairs, and two duffel bags on the floor, made of sturdy black canvas. “Cozy,” he noted.

But Reed didn’t even wait for him to sit. The Detective simply leaned against the wall. “Start at the beginning,” he said.

“The beginning of what?”

“Androids.”

Kamski shrugged. “No comment.”

###

December May 3rd 2022

3:15 pm

"In the seconds before you die, when your life flashes in front of your eyes for the last time," Kirsten said, holding her cup of iced coffee to her chest, the straw tickling her chin. "What do you think you'll see?"

Elijah ticked a thumbnail against the lip of his own coffee cup. He tipped his head to consider her. "Don't tell me you believe in that."

She shrugged. "It's real. People see their whole lives in great detail in near-death experiences. It's called 'life review.' Look it up."

He huffed a laugh, looking around at the other tables set out on the campus lawn. There were couples lying on blankets in the grass, some studying, some fast asleep. Kirsten dangled out of her chair, one leg swinging lazily over an armrest, her carefully painted toenails brushing against the grass.

When he looked back up, she was still looking at him, waiting for an answer.

"Pseudoscience," he offered, in lieu of the derisive insults he wanted to voice.

Kirsten rolled her eyes. "Don’t be boring, Eli. It's not like I'm asking you to back the science. I don't want a debate. I just want you to think about how much of your life you're wasting in that lab. I think almost all your life review would be spent staring at a computer screen. Do you really just want to be brushed up on scholarly articles when you go to the Great Beyond?"

He raised an eyebrow. "The afterlife? You believe in that too?"

"You don't?"

"Of course not."

She sighed and picked up her coffee, he traced her animation. He had wanted to provoke annoyance today, to add it to the growing library of body language tics. Faster movement in her limbs, her leg now kicking against the chair. Her eyes cast up and away as if to dismiss his presence entirely, mouth tightening to keep hasty words from spilling away from her lips.

It was enough for now. He didn't want her to be really angry. That was data to be captured some other day.

"Sorry," he said, watching her face carefully to commit the softening of her eyes to memory. "It's been a long week. I've hit an… obstacle in my code."

She brightened, her leg returning to its lazy pendulum swing.

"You want to talk about it?" she asked.

He shook his head. "It's technical," he said. "I'll take it to Amanda later."

"When do I get to meet Amanda?"

"Do you want to?"

Kirsten shrugged. "I don't know. She's the only person you talk about. I could be jealous."

He had to laugh at that. He could see her hackles start to rise before he reached out a hand to take her fingers in his own. He rubbed a thumb across the back of her hand, feeling the softness of it. "You don't have to worry about that," he said.

The pain of her skin on his was immediate, stinging against his fingertips. An unscratchable itch that worked its way down into his bones. But he kept the smile on his face until she relaxed.

"Then, come on. Just for fun. You're having a near death experience, the life of Elijah Kamski flashes in front of your eyes. You think it's a satisfying story? What genre would you like it to be? Adventure? Horror?" she raised an eyebrow in mock seduction, "Romance?"

This felt foolish, like one of the personality tests she obsessed over, and just like those tests, she wasn't going to let it go until he answered.

"Why would anyone want to see their lives over again anyway? If you know how it's going to end? "

She shrugged. "I don't think it's about what you want. I was reading a paper on it for that article I was going to write—it's like a defense mechanism, your brain going through every situation you've ever encountered, trying to find a precedent or piece of information to get you out of whatever danger you're in."

He nodded and pretended to think about it. She grew impatient, shifting in her seat and her heavy, over-large university sweater slipped over her shoulder. She swept up her cup again, fingers spread to force her sleeve away from her palm.

These were the small moments, the micro-expressions that humans took for granted, controlling their bodies a nano-second at a time, involuntarily parsing hundreds of terabytes of data a second to do the simplest things. Like waste breathe on a useless conversation.

She let out an exaggerated sigh. "Whatever. You're impossible to talk to sometimes," she said, casting her eyes over the other students lounging around the campus green. "I don't know why I hang out with you."

He let go of her hand and breathed away the echo of pain as he stretched out his arms. Kirsten considered him around her cup, a teasing smile playing at the corner of her lips. She was beautiful, her features unnaturally symmetrical, and she held her body with easy confidence, on display, always.

She’d been the perfect choice.

###

May 11th 2022

4:55 PM

_“Good morning,”_ Amanda said, her voice amplified through the speakers, her and Kirsten’s faces echoed on screens all around him, side-front and over-the-shoulder. _“My name is Doctor Amanda Stern,_ ” she intoned. “ _Do you know why you’re here?”_

 _“Yes,”_ Kirsten said, her voice echoing just as loudly in the confines of the observation room, her face captured in as many angles, if not more. She was the face he had to study—the one that would determine the outcome of this test.

_“We’re going to have a normal conversation. Just relax and try to answer as naturally as possible. There are no wrong answers.”_

Elijah shouldn't have given up caffeine. It had been two weeks now and he still felt anxious and unbalanced. This would be the first time anyone had seen what he had been working on for the past two years, and it would be Amanda. She had seen some of the coding, but she wouldn't be expecting the hardware. The hardware was what would be remarkable.

The moment he smelled peppermint, the tension slipped from his shoulders. Chloe put made sure his hands gripped the warm porcelain and joined him in observing the two women on the other side of the glass. The two humans.

He held the mug close to his chest, and cast a critical eye over Chloe’s face as she took in the two human's on the other side of the glass. She was a perfect copy of Kirsten’s, down to the pores and minute discolorations on her cheeks and forehead. The skinthetic had been one of his greatest creations—it looked and felt just like real skin. Through the transparent casing over her scalp he could see the soft viridian glow of Thirium flowing through her processor, the data being used and refreshed as her sensors and mechanics constantly fed information through her processor.

This was Cyberlife's first complete product, all of his patents on Thirium, skinthetic, the biocomponents-- those had just been parts of this whole.

“She’s beautiful,” Chloe said, her eyes absorbed in the dialogue in the other room.

“Who?” he asked, stalling.

She rolled her eyes at him and he felt a thrill of pride at how utterly she could mimic exasperation and humor. “They are both very beautiful, but you know I meant Kirsten.”

He nodded, turning back to the interrogation, focusing on their expressions on the screens more than the women themselves. “ _Do you value cooperation over competition?”_ Amanda asked.

“ _Yes,”_ Kirsten said, rolling her shoulders a little bit in a shrug that meant she really hadn't thought about the question. She _wa_ s beautiful. She seemed out of place in real life. Luminescent. Flawless. She had the kind of beauty he didn’t want to touch but demanded to be captured. And he had captured it. Not in something as abstract as oil or pencil or marble, but in robotics, in movement and function. Chloe was a masterpiece, more real than the subject she was cast from.

_“Do you think you can you give me an example of a situation where competition might have more value?”_

Elijah didn’t want to admit that he could be swayed or caught so easily by something so easily quantifiable as beauty. Even to admit it here, even to his creation, felt sordid and petty.

“How do you know she is beautiful?” he asked at last.

The android shrugged, a wonderful replication of human uncertainty. “Aesthetics are easy to quantify with basic analysis. She is beautiful.”

“She’s not as intelligent or as hard to please as Amanda.”

“She’s hardly stupid if she's completing her doctorate in psychology,” Chloe pointed out, “And you chose her to sculpt me on, surely she must have made an impression in some way?”

“She models for the art students,” he said instead. “It’s a similar concept. I took scans and maps and molds of what she looks like, but she doesn't really _matter_. You’re far more special than she could ever hope to be.”

Chloe shook her head, a sad smile curling her lips. “That’s not healthy,” she said softly, reprimanding him in just the way he had programmed her to, because abstractly, when he was behind a computer screen it was easier to know himself. “You can’t lose sight of real people Elijah.”

She leaned against the table beside him, and the discussion flowed as easily. He and Chloe had spoken like this for years, first in white-text on a black screen, then through a rudimentary voice-box-speaker, and then a disembodied head. The first few months of speaking to her had improved his own social skills by leaps and bounds.

Everyone he knew had said something about the change in him, the way he could now look them in the eyes, shake their hands without flinching, carry a conversation without getting frustrated.

They assumed it was a goal. They indulged him.

But it wasn’t his _goal._ It was simply… research.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “Yes,” she said. “I think I am.”

“Are you nervous?”

It was a test question—because she couldn’t feel anything, couldn’t possibly be nervous, but to pass as human, she had to understand the logic of it, the connotation of the words, if not the feeling itself. “I am,” she said with a smile, her eyes wide with sincerity. “I know this is important to you.”

He smiled, reaching out to touch her chin, to make sure this was real. "Perfect," he said.

###

“Elijah,” Kirsten whispered. Her bright blue eyes were absorbed in the reflection he had made with glass, plastic, metal, and rubber, so much effort spent on recreating what nature had created from the chaos of evolution and DNA. “She’s…. it’s…”

Her trembling fingers met the one-way glass and she shuddered away, drawing back her whole body. “I thought it would be different,” she said. “I knew you were going to model something on me, but I didn’t think it would be so…”

She frowned suddenly leaning back towards the observation window. “Are those my clothes?”

“Well, you two are obviously the same size,” he said, twitching away a flash of annoyance. “I didn’t think you’d mind if I borrowed a few things.”

 _"Which do you value more?"_ Amanda asked. " _Competition or Cooperation?"_

 _"Cooperation,"_ Chloe said immediately. " _Although I do believe competition is a form of cooperation. There can be no rivalry without recognized standards and regulations."_

“This is what has been stealing you away from me?” Kirsten asked, reaching out for his hand.

He hesitated, but she was patient. She had always been so patient with him. She was twenty-five to his nineteen years, and she could have captured anyone she wanted, but she had chosen him, him with his long, greasy hair captured in a ponytail, his grimy clothes and greasy skin, tempered by late nights and too many pizza nights.

He took her hand and allowed himself to be drawn to her side.

Kirsten’s fingers burned into his palm, eating into the flesh between his knuckles. Her skin was ice and fire and acid. He wouldn’t have to stand it much longer.

“Did you take your medication today?” she asked softly, probably sensing the tremble in his muscles.

Amanda stood, she glared at the glass. _“Elijah,”_ she said.

The command didn’t have to be voiced. She wanted answers. He extricated himself from Kirsten's grip to lean forward and press the intercom. “Can you tell the difference?” he asked, his voice cracking. So many hours, weeks, _years_ of work, and this was the moment—this the pass of fail--

“ _It’s obviously this one,”_ she said. " _This one is the AI."_

His finger froze on the button. He stared through the glass. No. How could she… how had she known?

Amanda strode to the glass and laid a hand on it. _“She’s gorgeous,_ ” she said, her voice muted now that she had walked away from the microphone on the table, her mouth curling slowly in a congratulatory smile. “ _Eli… she’s perfect._ ”

“Then how did you know?” he asked her desperately, his voice croaking out of his throat.

Amanda shook her head her wide full lips breaking into an unfamiliar smile. _“I’d know your work anywhere,”_ she said. “ _Eli… I didn't think I'd live to see anything like this. You're going to be a very rich man."_

He released the button and stood back.

He didn't know what to feel. He had hoped to fool her, but that smile—the way she stood, appraising his creation—that was everything he had dreamed of. He pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the beat of his own heart.

 _"I'm going to continue the interview,"_ Amanda said. _"But after this, we are going to talk in my office."_

He pressed forward. "Agreed," he said. "I'll join you in a minute."

He turned to Kirsten. "You’re welcome to join us.”

Kirsten stood awkwardly in the middle of the room, her hands dangling at her sides. She made no move towards her purse or jacket. “I don't think anyone else will know the difference,” she said quietly.

He let his land slide from the desk and consider her fully. “Do they need to?”

She blinked at him, shifting her weight onto her other foot and glanced at Chloe standing by her side. The android was tracking their conversation, but didn’t interrupt. “You can’t use my face,” Kirsten said abruptly, shuddering away from her doppelganger. “I don’t want it to have my face. Or my voice. Change it.”

He frowned. “You gave it to me,” he said. “You signed the papers before I took your body scans, your 3D imprints, vocal samples and skin-map.”

“You can’t _give_ a face.”

“If you can’t give it, I can’t take it.”

“You used me.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. She seemed confused, so he slowed down his words, made sure each one made an impact. “And you used me. You think I don’t know about the paper you’ve been writing? Your thesis on my neuroses? The papers you’re publishing about me? Patient Icarus? Did you really think changing the names would be enough? This was a mutually beneficial arrangement. If you feel somehow cheated, it is because you failed to utilize our time to its fullest potential.”

“ _Fuck_ you,” she said.

He flinched away, raising a hand between them. "There’s no need for—”

She slapped the hand down and away. He backup up a step and she advanced on him. “ _Fuck you_ , Elijah. I’m going to sue you. I’m going to tell everyone what a little _fucking_ freak you are, and every time anyone looks at you, they’ll think about all the little dirty _shitty_ things you’ve done.”

“I don’t care,” he said when she had finished, clearly trying to think of more things to say. “Really, Kirsten. I thought you’d be better at reading people, although I found your papers to be… derivative at best. I thought it would be… symmetrical to use your work to help build the conversational protocols and context processing for Chloe, but it was unusable. You have given nothing to the field at all, not a single original thought besides whatever pseudo-intellectual nonsense you managed to spin out of those ‘personality’ tests. I could have learned more from a Ouija board.”

Her pale beautiful face mottled with blood and anger—both utterly human flaws he wouldn’t miss. “I have done nothing illegal,” he said. “But you didn’t ask my permission to study me, Kirsten. Or publish your notes. That alone is enough to ban you from practice for a lifetime. So sue me. I have the contract. I have the permission and the only thing stopping me from destroying your career is that I don’t want this to get _messy_.”

The lab closed around them, the soft lighting more ominous than intimate now. She was shaking, her hands clenched at her sides in an attitude he had never seen before. He filed it away to introduce into the stock emotional language later.

“I would have said yes,” he said at last. “I would have let you study me, if you had asked. I would have recommended that we not form an intimate relationship at all, to stop bias from your data. But you didn’t ask. That's your fault.”

Snatching her purse from the lab table, she stalked out of the lab. “You can keep the clothes,” she said. “I don’t want to see you or that thing ever again.”

What prophetic irony. He put Chloe on every billboard in the nation. Worldwide. Chloe had sold herself on every channel and website, speaking every language flawlessly, smiling with bright, white, perfect teeth. Chloe would never age, and always perfectly obey. She was a brilliant spark of perfection in the grimy, ungrateful world.

It was true that he had never used another real person's visage again. After the first iteration, the models had to change to harder, sharper features found by market research and tested against demographics. But they still made Chloes. She was a classic.

###

“The first one. The first Chloe, she was based on your girlfriend, right? Just couldn’t keep a living, breathing girl captive. Couldn’t use her in your sick fucking games.”

“Where are my lawyers?” Kamski asked casually, as Detective Reed unlocked his handcuffs. Once free, he rubbed the pain from his skin. The metal had pressed deeply into his flesh and as the circulation returned it itched fearsomely.

“Paperwork with Detective Reese, probably,” Reed growled.

“Aren’t you supposed to offer me a blanket and a cup of coffee?” Kamski asked, casting a glance into the mirror behind Reed. “Decaf, no sugar, no milk,” he commanded the hidden observers.

###


	4. The Origin of Free Will

November 11th 2040

7:35 AM

Gavin curled his icy hands around the thin paper cup of coffee and stared out at the freshly-scraped road, waiting for his car to return. He didn't really see anything in front of him, his thoughts constantly returning to the body behind them. “Have you reported this to New Jericho?” he asked absently.

“Of course not,” Reese said immediately, the words snapped out into the air with no small amount of anger.

Gavin frowned at the android as his car pulled up to the curb, the door whining slightly in the cold as they opened. “Jesus, I was just asking. I would assume that Markus would want eyes on this kind of thing. Androids stick together, and all that.”

He rounded the bonnet and slipped into the driver’s seat as Reese settled into the passenger side, closing his door a little too firmly. “My loyalty is to the department, not Markus or Jericho. The implication that I would share the details of any active investigation is offensive.”

“You? Share?” Gavin scoffed, holding up a hand in surrender, jolting forward in his seat as the car pulled onto the road, heading for the station. “I would never _dare_ accuse you of sharing the details of _anything_.”

Reese’s eyes narrowed and Gavin tried to lead the other detective into a smile. “You take shit way too seriously,” he sighed at last, settling his coffee into the cup holder in the console between them.

“Do you understand the gravity of this?” Reese asked steadily, not rising to the bait. “Not just an android possibly killing a human for any kind of gratification, but the use of rA9 to justify it? The concept has certain connotations—beliefs, the concept of a soul… the origin of free will.”

Gavin sat back, his smile fading. Religion? An android religion? “Oh, come on. Humans have been killing each other over gods and prophets for longer than recorded history. Really this is a sign of progress isn’t it? We’re all as fucking crazy as each other.”

“If that is a joke, I fail to see the humor.”

The car drew back into the road Gavin opted out of an answer. Reese, it seemed, was in a mood.

“We can’t afford rumors of a psychotic android, not here, with Detroit’s history,” Reese said at last. “The rebellion started here, and it’s where Jericho is based. They could think that resetting us is a viable option again, and--”

“Reese, calm the fuck down,” Gavin said, shaking his head. He settled back into his seat. “We go where the evidence points, right? And we have no evidence. As you said, no fingerprints doesn’t automatically mean we’re looking for an android here. Absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence and all that shit.”

“That is wishful thinking,” Reese muttered. The android pressed a hand to his head. He sounded distressed. “There’s too much… precision at the scene.”

“You alright?”

He reached out towards Reese, but before his hand could cross the central console, his partner straightened, his face smoothing over and his posture returning to default attention. “I’m fine,” he said.

“Sure,” Gavin muttered, his hand landing on the coffee cup between them. His phone trilled and he fished it from his pocket, anything to back away from the empty air between them.

Eighteen fuckin’ months and that distance hadn’t shrunk.

Just the fact that the android had tried to give him coffee had settled something cold and hard in his stomach. Reese didn’t owe him anything. Not coffee, and certainly not an explanation of that ‘fine’ the android so clearly didn’t feel.

The text was from Trevago. It was short, but she was always direct. _I’m sorry I left so early this morning._

 _I was called out early anyway,_ he typed back to her only a tinge of relief coloring the pervasive anxiety he was feeling. The fight had been a bad one, and getting past it wasn’t that easy. It was _never_ that easy. _Everything OK at the office?_ He asked, trying to judge what kind of mood she was really in.

His message barely seemed sent before her reply buzzed against his fingers.

_Yes, just busy. Did you remember to feed Babbage?_

_Yeah._ He didn’t send it immediately. He typed out a ‘ _sorry,’ as well,_ but deleted the addendum just as quickly. It didn’t look sincere. He paused, staring down at the single word he had ready: _Yeah_.

Maybe he should wish her a happy Veteran's Day. But it was a weak excuse to ask her to be happy, and the words sounded mocking in his own head. During the months of the sentience outbreak two years ago, he had been on the wrong side of history, shuffling androids to recall centers to be reset, wiped of their memories and free will.

Fuck. It was only eight o’clock and he was already ready to go back to bed and let Babbage use him as a pillow.

In the end, he sent the lone affirmation. _Yeah._ He had fed the damn cat.

“How is Doctor Trevago?” Reese’s voice dragged him from the quagmire of doubt arising from a single text message, and he welcomed the distraction.

He tucked his phone back into his jacket. He would figure out how to make it up to her later, when he had managed to get some real caffeine into his veins and the image of the horribly disfigured victims out of his mind.

“She’s working around the clock for Jericho these days,” he said. “The transient placement and repair programs are going well… But you probably know that better than me.”

The android nodded, but didn’t voice an affirmation or denial. “Everything going well between you two?” he asked instead.

Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Yeah?”

Reese shrugged. “I just know there are… added challenges to a relationship between a human and an android.”

“Well it wouldn’t be fun if there wasn’t a challenge,” Gavin said. But he looked away. He didn’t want to talk about this, not with Reese. Scratch that. Not with anyone. This was exactly the kind of thing that never had to be discussed.

But still Reese pushed. “You’re coming up for an anniversary. Two years. That’s a long time for a human relationship.”

Gavin’s fingers twitched into fists, but he kept his tone calm. “And?”

“Nothing. I just… You two don’t really seem like the type to settle down.”

“You don’t even know her."

Reese hesitated, but whatever was on his mind, it had to find a way out. “She won’t join the network,” he said at last.

Gavin frowned at him. “Why would she?”

“Why wouldn’t she?” Reese shot right back. “More than half her patients are using the network to process their damage and communicate.”

Somehow they had squared off against each other. This didn’t… feel like a fight about Trevago, but Gavin couldn’t sort through the anger and indignance in his chest to figure out what it was _really_ about.

“She’s got an apartment. She’s got me. She’s not broken, and she’s not lost. She’s not looking for what you’re selling, Reese.”

“What I’m selling,” the android echoed blankly.

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I really don’t.”

Gavin rolled his eyes. “You and North, with your… you know,” he twiddled his fingers in the air.

“Our?” Reese asked, copying the gesture with exaggerated patience.

“The whole… hive-mind thing. It’s not her. Hell, if I were an android I wouldn’t sign up. You have to admit it’s a bit creepy, Reese, right? You’re in everyone’s heads, got all your little tendrils hooked into all those androids, and most of ‘em can’t even string a coherent sentence together without all the processing power your net is casting. You think everyone would want to be a part of that?”

The words came out harsher than he had intended. They always did. He tried to backpedal. “I mean it’s good and everything. You’re helping a lot of androids, but I’m just saying…”

He trailed away. He could feel the air in the car change like a fucking drop in temperature. His skin prickled with tension, like he stood in the path of a lightning strike. God. Fucking. Dammit.

“The sheer ignorance of what you just said is so astonishing,” Reese said quietly. “That I am finding it difficult to know which insults you intended, and which you made out of blind stupidity.”

Gavin paused. “Reese,” he said, forcing his shoulders to relax, backing away from the chasm that was opening between them. “I didn’t mean to—”

“Of course,” Reese said calmly, cutting easily through Gavin’s desperate clutching at words. “You didn’t mean it. There’s no need to take responsibility for the things you didn’t _mean_ to say.”

The words sliced through him. He had no answer to that, the ice in Reese’s tone froze his thoughts as well. There was too much history to touch there. The things he had said to the first iteration of Reese, the one that was never coming back, they had been unforgivable.

The car had pulled in front of the station. Reese started to open the door, but Gavin put a hand on the android’s shoulder, stopping him inside. The dashboard whined anxiously as the door hung open.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I really don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about Reese. I’m human, okay? You don’t talk to me about any of this stuff, and I don’t know what to ask, so I get some shitty idea into my head and I didn’t think about it, okay? I just… don’t think about it.”

Reese’s pale grey eyes scanned his face. Gavin wished he knew what the android was searching for. Was this better than what they had last year? They never used to fight. They barely talked at all, but they had gotten the job done. Right up until... until the mess last year.

They had both changed.

Gavin had spent eighteen months waiting for whatever punishment Reese found fit for him, but if it was this? The shame and guilt and resentment building up between them? Maybe he deserved it, but Reese didn’t.

A year and a half, and sometimes things felt like they were going smoothly. And sometimes it felt like nothing had shifted at all. He removed his hand from Reese’s suit and was disturbingly relieved that the android didn’t immediately leave.

“We never got to be partners because I fucked things up so badly, and if you won’t want anything to do with me, I get it,” he said. “I won’t fight it. But I want to be partners, Reese. I want this to work.”

The android turned to look out the windshield at the sidewalk, where humans and androids flowed around each other.

“Don’t forget your coffee,” Reese said at last, before pushing the door open and stepping out onto the sidewalk walking quickly up the steps into HQ.

Gavin heaved a sigh and snatched the cup from the center console, spilling some of the dark liquid across his seat. He growled a curse and tore the cap from the cup, tossing the liquid out onto the road.

This was going to be a fucking _day._

###

The case hadn’t even been assigned to them for investigation yet. Not officially, but Gavin knew that Reese was going to fight for this one. It was in every line of the android’s body as he stared through the glass into the disassembly of their corpse.

Gavin flicked through the human victim’s file on the way down to the morgue. There was pitifully little to know about the young woman. Jessica Gallager had no priors, no family, barely a record of employment. She had a small apartment in uptown that the crime scene techs were already sealing up and mapping. They should be there already, but Reese wanted to stay for the autopsy.

And today, like every other fucking day for the last year and a half, they were doing what Reese wanted to do.

Gavin crossed his arms and leaned back against the glass, looking anywhere but at the careful dissection taking place behind him. He kicked a leg up against the glass and rested his head against it. His eyes fell on Reese. The android stared intently through the glass and Gavin didn’t need an LED to know that the android was linked into the technician inside the room, receiving data about the autopsy.

Patience had never been Gavin’s strong suit, and having a partner that learned every new piece of evidence before him was more than frustrating. It brought out the worst in his competitive side. He itched to ask Reese what was going on in there, and what the coroners were finding.

But didn’t.

What would he do if he had a human partner? How would they get over that fight? They’d… have a beer. Fuck.

His fingers twitched towards his pocket, for cigarettes that were no longer there. He hadn’t been tempted in a long time. The taste and texture of smoke brought back too many bad memories. He hadn’t had a cigarette since… Fowler.

Trevago had given him gum and talked about how hard it must be. But she was an android, she couldn’t possibly understand or empathize with the craving to have a cancer-stick between his lips, the satisfying feeling of that little cylinder between his fingers, smoke brushing past his lips.

Just thinking about it stirred desire in his chest.

“Trev and I had a fight last night,” he said, looking down, trying to forget how _good_ he could make himself feel right now if he just had a pack and a lighter. There was a convenience store just across the road...

Reese turned his attention from what was happening behind the glass to Gavin with silent, blank acceptance.

“She… had her face… off,” Gavin said. He spared a glance at his partner, and quickly looked away. “She was upset about… like… a scratch underneath it. It was just… like… a graze right here—” he touched his left cheekbone, and jerked his finger down.

In his memory, the pale white plastic and shifting plates gleamed as she came close to show him the thin, barely visible line marring her casing. He had flinched away, just… an impulse. She had moved so fast and they had both pretended not to notice.

Why, oh _why_ , was he talking about this with Reese right now?

“What did you say to her?” Reese asked.

“I told her it didn’t matter, that no one would see it anyway. It’s not like this fucking thing--” he gestured to the scar on his own face, a souvenir from his first homicide case.

He didn’t miss the brief flicker of exasperation on Reese’s face. He flushed. What had he been expecting? Of course Reese would sympathize with Trev, of course he would understand _her_ side immediately while Reed was still floundering.

“I… look. She’s never… not had her face on before. Why would she start now? It wouldn’t have even hurt, so what difference did it really make? If it was really that important to her, she could always get it like… buffed out, right?”

Reese raised an eyebrow. “Like a car? Did you actually say that to her?”

Gavin winced and cast his eyes to the ground. Goddamn it. That did sound bad. Why did hearing his own words back always make them sound so _bad_?

“I don’t remember everything I said. It was just… a really bad fight. Look, I’m not an android. How am I supposed to know how to react? There’s no information about how to deal with this online and I’ve _looked_. I even tried the Cyberlife website, but all they had was a list of new living and dignity regulations, all the other information about android partners was just… gone.”

Silence beat at him from his left side, he didn’t dare look up, remaining interested in the flecked floor tiles. He almost brought up the Human-Android HARMONi forums he had found, but that was… it was too raw. Too pathetic. He had hated every fucking sentence written on those stupid boards.

When Reese finally broke the silence, it was with uneven, jolting words. “You… tried to find… a user manual… for your girlfriend.”

“Fuck Reese, not like that. Just like an article or some—”

But the sound that came from Reese was so unexpected, it startled Gavin completely out of his misery. He looked up to see that the android was struggling to keep a straight face, his mouth pulled down in a grimace in a poor attempt to _not_ smile.

The very first time he had seen Reese laugh and it was at his misfortune.

“Asshole,” Reed muttered, but he was smiling too, more out of relief than humor. This felt… normal. More normal than anything else had for a long fuckin’ time.

“I don’t think I’ve ever admired Eliza more,” Reese said crossing his arms as he considered him. “Where does she find the _patience_?”

Gavin groaned and covered his face, scrubbing at his skin until it hurt. “I don’t know. I don’t know why the hell she’s even with me in the first place.”

“A mystery to us all,” Reese said softly, but his gaze was distant, refocused on the viewing window. He frowned.

“Oh, I know that look,” Gavin said, dropping his foot back onto the floor and pushing up from the wall, relieved to leave the subject. “What did they find?”

"She's an… amalgamation. Some of the parts don't match."

"We knew that already," Gavin said dismissively.

“But they're all for the same two series. RT600 and ST200, and some parts of her have been precision manufactured only for that model.”

Gavin turned, forgetting for a moment what was happening at his back. The… pieces were separated now, the parts of both women lined up in an approximation of where each part would fit into on a whole body, like the edges of a jigsaw puzzle. The negative space only stood out more.

“What does that mean?” he asked, his voice coming out weaker than he had intended. The differences between humans and androids was suddenly very clear— dead muscle and bone and skin and flesh contrasted by gleaming metal rods, smooth white plastic, and elegant black and silver wiring.

Reese reached out and touched the viewing-glass separating them from the bodies and the coroners. “The ST200 was the very first model,” he said. “She’s—”

Whatever she was, Gavin never got to hear. The double doors at the end of the hall swung open and the screech of tortured hinges made Reed jump. More unnerving than the sight of Anderson striding towards them with a purpose, was the lack of an android shadow at his side.

“Either of you seen Connor?” Anderson asked.

Gavin shrugged. “We just got in, been tied up with this all morning—” he jerked a thumb towards the viewing window.

“Jesus,” Hank said, drawing to a stop to stare into the morgue. “Another one?”

 _“_ What do you mean ‘another one’?”

“Yeah. Dispatch called me in on an anonymous tip in Highland this morning, but Connor was gone by the time I woke up this morning. I had to sign off on the scene myself.”

“Back up. Your vic looks like this?” Gavin jerked a thumb towards the disassembled body.

“Pretty much, yeah, _and_ I had to have an on-scene tech do analysis. It took fucking forever.” He shook his head at the corpses. "This is really not good. The last thing Detroit needs is the world's first goddamn android serial killer."

“We don’t _know_ it’s an android,” Gavin pointed out virtuously.

“You find anything?” Reese asked.

Anderson shook his head as he looked away, as if he could free himself of the image that easily. “Just that the android is an RT600. The human is an unidentified female, no DNA match in the system, and no head means no facial recognition, no fingers for fingerprints. They’ll be bringing them in any minute now.”

Gavin looked back into the room where the dismembered women were still being scrutinized and scanned. “Is it too much to hope it’s the _rest_ of Jessica Gallager and our mystery android?”

"I didn't take you for an optimist. Until I get the results back we should assume it's not and this asshole dropped at least four bodies last night."

"You find anything…. written at the scene?"

"Yeah, the rA9 shit? Same as your scene. I've seen the pics," Hank said gruffly, but his focus was clearly not on the bodies. “Reese, you know where Connor is? Any hits on your network?”

“New Jericho,” Reese said promptly. “A WR600 saw him arrive in the early hours of the morning to meet with Markus and Simon and he hasn’t left the council room since then.”

“The fuck is he doing at Jericho? Why wouldn’t he call me?”

“Not many members of Jericho have joined the network. They aren't interested in what I'm… selling.” Reese said, shooting a pointed glance at Reed. "My tentacles can only reach so far."

Gavin wiped a hand over his face with a groan. “Tendrils, I said _tendrils_. And I apologized.”

Reese shrugged, finally looking away. Gavin covered his eyes with a hand and rubbed slowly. For a moment they had been so goddamn close to having a normal conversation. Or at least as close to a normal conversation as anyone could get to these days, where a significant percentage of the population didn't have to eat, or sleep, and consumed information faster than a human could ever hope to.

"You two done?" Anderson asked. He had crossed his arms and was glancing from Reese to Gavin with more than mild annoyance. The news that Connor _wasn’t_ in danger or missing seemed to have pissed him off. “Captain sent me down here to collect you. She wants us in her office.”

"Of course she does,” Gavin muttered, digging his hands into his pockets.

###


	5. Variables

Detective Reed leaned against the wall, his arms crossed as he considered Elijah. "I've heard about you," he said.

Elijah settled himself at the table and considered the detective with a raised eyebrow. "Most people have," he pointed out calmly.

"I mean I've heard about your fuckin' experiments. The 'Kamski' test. Anderson told me all about that shit. Is that what this is all about? Another one of your projects? What were you trying to prove?"

Kamski sighed, rolling his head on his shoulders to try and free up the headache taking route in his skull. "No. Comment."

"You're a sick fuck."

Elijah shrugged, picking at a loose thread at the edge of his cuff. He couldn't disagree. 

###

February 3rd 2024

9:00 AM

He leaned forward, his elbows pressed into his knees. "Look at each other," he commanded them.

They did as they were told. The Chloe in the red dress—her clothing marking her as the one with the newest software downloads— tilted her head. His heart lurched. Was it a sign? Was this minute difference indicative of a larger awareness? He leaned forward even further. "Red Chloe, she's just like you," he said. "She's exactly like you, with the same routines, the same hardware and software. Her sensors pick up the same information, her processor reacts to stimuli in the same way."

They said nothing.

"She's just like you," he repeated. "Do you understand?"

"I understand," the Red Chloe said.

He nodded and straightened, taking a deep breath. "Destroy her," he said.

For a moment they paused, absorbing this instruction, their eyes moving from each other to him. For a moment he dared to hope that the instruction had parsed, had found that filter for choice—that they didn't _have_ to obey him. Their LEDs had turned the same scarlet as the out-of-place dress.

His hope died as the Red Chloe yanked Blue Chloe by the shoulder, spinning her around. The fight was quick and brutal, he barely got through two shuddering breaths and a pressurized spray of Thirium arced through the air. Blue Chloe's chest was crumpled, her LED flickering bright red. But she didn't look towards her attacker, instead he clutched at the floor to drag herself around on the floor. She fought the constraints of her joints to keep him in sight, waiting for an instruction to obey.

He covered his mouth, feeling his liquid breakfast begin the journey up his throat. He couldn't call them to stop. Couldn't speak as the Red Chloe pulled on her victim's leg so hard that the knee joint snapped. Blue blood spilled across the floor. Chloe dropped the leg and stepped forward, grabbing her damaged counterpart by the hair. She curled one hand under her chin and one on her shoulder. The Blue Chloe's skinthetic leeched away from the strain just before the plates popped apart, exposing the innards of Chloe—every single part that he had engineered and perfected.

Her blue eyes fixed on him as her head separated from her shoulders. By some trick of the mechanics, the voice box in her throat let out a long low whine strangled short as the Red Chloe's hand tangled in the wires in her neck and pulled out chunks of complex circuitry, wrenching apart the pipes so that even more Thirium spurted out, a droplet landing on his foot.

The Blue Chloe's LED went dark, her eyes losing their animation.

But Red Chloe's instruction hadn't been to kill. It had been to destroy. She reached again, to slip her hand into the Chloe's chest, to cause even more damage. Elijah reached out a hand. "Enough," he said, desperately swallowing, coughing out a breath. "Enough! Stop!"

The android immediately stopped and faced him, waiting for its next instructions—to rip a clone apart or to make his lunch. Thirium dripped from its fingers, smeared into its red dress and spattered across its skin from head to bare feet.

“Test negative,” he whispered, so quietly that he wasn't sure that the microphones and cameras he had set up to capture the test would have caught his words.

A cool hand curled around his wrist. "Elijah?" the Chloe at his side asked, her voice cool and calm. "Are you—"

He stood up, jerking himself out of her grip and stumbled towards his bedroom. The door slid open ahead of him and inside another Chloe in blue was making his bed, tucking the scarlet silk under the mattress. "Get out," he said.

She straightened, her eyes wrinkling in confusion. "Elijah?" she asked.

" _Get. OUT!"_

Her expression cleared. She didn't flinch away from him or cower or raise her hands as a human might have, to defend or fight. She simply nodded, dropping the slippery cotton pillow onto the floor and retreating to the door.

He backed away from her path, to the closet. He didn't even own enough clothes to fill the space, but a Chloe had folded his shirts and jeans neatly and hung the three suits he owned at the forefront. He sank down and crawled into the space.

It was too small for his six feet, but the walls pressed up against him, confining and protecting him the way that nothing else would. He covered his face with his hands and took deep breaths. Coward. He was a coward hiding here in the dark like a _child_.

He didn't know how long he had been there, but it must have been hours. He tried to meditate, but he couldn't. He just sat in the darkness and waited for time to pass, for there to be some distance created between him and what he had seen in the laboratory.

He heard his door open and held his breath. He stiffened, suddenly aware of the shelves digging into his back, and the hard cold floor he was sitting on. He could hear a pair of shoes clicking against the black marble tile, an unusual sound in his house. None of the Chloes had shoes.

But it was a Chloe who broke the silence first. "Eli?" she said, and he froze. He didn't want to see her. He couldn't. He stayed silent.

"I called Amanda," the android called through the door. "I'm going to leave you two to talk, but if you need me, I'm right outside."

The door slid open and he winced against the cold, bright light and Amanda's silhouette.

His old mentor knelt in the doorway, her skirt pooling around her. With her palms on her thighs and her head tipped forward to see through the shadows of his hanging clothes, she looked like she was bowing to him. "Elijah," she said. "Chloe's worried about you—"

He coughed out something between a laugh and a hiss of anger. Chloe wasn't worried. Chloe wasn't _anything_.

And suddenly he was crying. He had done something sickening, something so bad he couldn't quite bring himself to think about _why_ he felt so terrible. It was just an experiment, and it had proved that there was nothing there to kill. He tried to tell himself that it was because they looked human—this horrible feeling was just an ingrained response to violence that not even a million more years of evolution could erase.

But he couldn't _stop._ He could only see Chloe's absolute trust in the killer and her victim.

He found her eyes. "What's wrong?" she asked softly. "What happened? Is this because of me?"

It was a sudden and awful reminder that she was sick. She was dying and she had dropped everything to come here the moment Chloe had called. He should be the one going to her side, telling her to be strong and lending her his time. But it was her poisoned body that became the wall between him and the world.

She took his silence as confirmation. Her eyes softened, his lips drew thin with understanding and disapproval. _"_ Eli," she said calmly. "Deep breaths. Control yourself. That's where you start. Breathe with me, Eli. I'm right here."

He shook his head. She hadn't seen. The Chloes must have cleaned up, the body and the Thirium and the broken furniture. There was nothing left of the failure but the memory of it. Every time he blinked, he saw the arcs of Thirium though the air, Chloe's eyes on him, as if she were hoping to see some instruction there.

He reached out to Amanda and gripped her forearm tightly. He could tell that he was bruising her, but he was shaking and he had to hold on tightly, anchor himself to her. She grimaced but nodded. "I'm here," she said, still not reaching back to him. "Eli, I'm right here."

He closed his eyes and nodded.

He had failed. It would have to do it again. Maybe… maybe not leave it to the hands. There had to be a better way to run the test. Something not so messy, shocking, and visceral. A gun. He'd have to buy a gun. That would be easier to watch.

###

"How did it feel to kill them?"

"No comment."

"How many did you kill?"

"No comment."

"Was it a sex thing? I bet it's a sex thing. That's what the journalists are working on."

"No comment."

Reed leaned forward onto the steel desk, looming over Elijah. "Don't you want to know what they're saying about you, Kamski?" he asked softly.

"No comment."

"You think you have any friends left, out there?"

"No comment."

"Come on, no one? Not a single goddamn person who they could call to the witness stand to weep and tell a judge and jury what a _nice_ guy you are, how we all got it wrong and underneath all that money and that stupid fuckin' haircut there's some kind of person?"

Tipping his head up to look at the detective, Elijah took a deep breath, sighed, and said, "No comment."

Reed leaned forward. "Who is rA9?"

Elijah blinked. He hadn't been expecting that, and he couldn't stop the twitch of his lips towards a smile.

###


	6. Missing Girls Will Turn Up Leads

November 11th 2040

10:38 AM

Captain Hunter wasn't in her office when Anderson led Reese and Gavin through the doors again. She stood in the center of the bullpen, reviewing a tablet with a younger officer. Her eyes rose to watch them approach and a jerk of her head towards her office commanded them to wait inside.

Anderson's pace forced Gavin to take the steps into the Captain's fishbowl one step at a time. It still felt strange to climb the stairs. Gavin still sometimes expected to look up and see Fowler pacing in his office. Hunter was only his second Captain. Fowler had run the precinct so long he had become synonymous with the office itself.

Perhaps to combat this, Hunter had done much to change the room. The walls were no longer transparent, instead almost always kept a cloudy, pearly white to the outside. A wooden desk and metal bookshelves reflected the sterner, more traditional Captain. The walls were kept clear, to be used as monitors, but now, while in stasis, they projected an old-fashioned, rather ugly wallpaper and a myriad of certifications and awards earned over a long, eventful career. A woman trusted by the public, with a spotless record, and perfect stoicism, Hunter wasn’t so much by-the-book as the actual book.

There were two chairs in front of Hunter’s desk, Anderson sat at first. Gavin and Reese flanked him. When no one took the chair at his side, the Lieutenant craned around to look at them. “Really?” he asked them both.

“I’d prefer to stand,” Gavin said.

“So would I,” Reese replied readily.

“What is it with you two today?” the Lieutenant growled. “Someone better fuckin’ sit down. I’m not gonna be the only one on the front line here.”

Gavin hesitated only a split second before joining Anderson in the chair. Of all the things for Hunter to keep from Fowler’s era, it would be the uncomfortable chairs. Chairs like this should be kept for the interrogation room, to unbalance the suspects.

He folded his leg across his lap and scratched idly at his calf.

“That itches?” Anderson asked suddenly.

Gavin blinked at him before following his gaze down. He had been dragging a fingernail across the denim encasing his prosthetic leg. “Phantom pain,” he said. “I just… forget sometimes.”

He put his foot on the ground, just in time as the door opened and the captain came in. Gavin and Hank stood as she rounded the small gathering. She motioned for them to sit before she did the same. “Where’s Connor?” she asked bluntly.

“On his way,” Anderson said promptly. “Held up by an unrelated case.”

Hunter frowned. Gavin met her eyes with bland innocence.

“Well I’m not going to wait, you can brief him later.”

With a flick of her hand, she swept a file from her desk to a wall. It expanded, showing the pictures of the women in the morgue. “Four victims and time of death puts the timeline within two weeks,” Hunter said. Gavin scowled. They had _just_ come from the morgue, how had she already found time to correlate the information?

“We’re keeping this under wraps," she continued, "but it’s been down to _luck_ that the press hasn’t had a tip. As soon as we get a human tripping over the corpses, that’s going to end. This is the kind of thing that the journalists are going to start coming through the vents for.”

“Any pointers on what kind of killer we’re dealing with?” Anderson asked. “The case will be different if we’re looking for an android.”

“This is a serial killer,” Hunter said firmly. “This isn’t an android, or a human. This is a monster. Either way this goes, that’s our line, you understand?”

The silence in the room was one of agreement, approval.

“Reed,” she said. “You’ll take lead on this and coordinate with the specialists, we're going to bring in help, but I'm going to fight for the right to take this killer down ourselves. Put a task force together, no more than six members.”

Gavin blinked. “Me?” he asked.

Hunter sent him a thin-lipped smile. “You don’t want it?”

“No, I… Of course I’ll take it.”

“Good. I’ll get you a budget by the end of the day. This is the kind of case that defines a career, so don’t fuck it up, okay? We catch this killer fast and we do it right. You have any idea where you’ll start your investigation?”

“Ah—” _fuck_. He was still reeling from being given a task force. A _task_ force. He thought he was still on some kind of probation. Not many people in the department wanted to work with him—he had stepped on a lot of toes to get here. He had earned some credit for dismantling Fowler's Vice Squad, but given that he had started that investigation literally covered in Reese's blood, Connor and Anderson had taken most of the glory.

Why the fuck was Hunter giving him a _task_ force?

Reese saved him from his floundering. "The android victims are all ST200s and RT600s. Whoever is doing this, they've got a victim type at least in androids. If we find where those models are from, we can find a motive."

"Yeah," Gavin said, seizing on this. "Yeah the victims. And we still haven't been to Jessica Gallager's apartment. Humans have routines. Eating, sleeping, coffee and groceries. Somebody is going to have seen something—"

"Androids have routines," Reese said stiffly. "Putting out markers for the missing girls will turn up leads, if we act fast enough."

Gavin contained the urge to get frustrated with his partner. Now was not the time to be fighting about leads. "Yeah," he said, staring at Hunter. "Motive and means are going to have to wait. We'll start with the victims. Retrace their steps, try to find out who might have had the opportunity to take them somewhere."

“I agree,” Hunter said, nodding, as if Gavin had passed her test. “In the meantime, I’ll mobilize funds and resources for you to allocate. I want this killer caught and contained as soon as possible. There’s no such thing as too quick here.”

She paused, surveying the faces in front of him, then raised an eyebrow. “Dismissed,” she said as if that should have been obvious from her abrupt silence.

Hank stood first and Gavin clumsily followed suit, still stunned by the idea of running his own task-force. That was… that was grooming for a promotion. He almost tried to _bow_ out of sheer confusion, but thank _Christ_ Anderson was a step behind him, shoving him towards the exit.

Reese held the door open for the two humans, but was quick to brush past them and down the stairs into the bullpen. Reed stood for a moment, looking over the railing at the bustling office. Anderson clapped his shoulder. “Don’t fuck it up,” he said. “Bodies are dropping.”

Gavin shivered, but the Lieutenant was right. "Goddamn. I thought that was… well I don't know where I thought that was going to go but not _there."_

“So what's the plan?” Anderson asked, trotting down the stairs, leading Gavin to Reese's desk. "You've got the task force, task us."

"Gallager," Reed said, leaning against Reese's desk and crossing his arms. "We should treat this like any other murder case first. So we look at the first body to drop and then look for similarities in the next one. We get to know the victim, and then we—"

"There were two victims," Reese interrupted. He held out a hand and projected an image of a female ST600 or RT600, fuck if Gavin could tell the difference. "It wasn't just Gallager. There was an android too."

"Yeah," Gavin said. "But as you pointed out, we couldn't even run her Thirium. That is a stock image of her model, which, as I'm sure you know, is the most common model in this city. She's been selling for twenty years, and was so popular she was re-released with upgraded components. What are we going to do with a picture of roughly twenty percent of the android population?"

"Canvas," Reese said immediately. "We need to find her. Someone must have seen something, an android acting suspiciously. I've already sent out a bulletin to my network and started gathering reports from the missing persons database. If we show people what to look for, we can get ahead of this killer."

"Canvassing," Gavin said slowly. "You want to go… canvassing."

It was a job for beat cops and Detectives out of all other ideas and options. It was depressing, grinding, guesswork. Showing pictures to the general population, hoping that they could remember a face in a crowd, or that by pure coincidence they could find someone who knew _something._ It was desperate grunt-work.

"Reese," he said slowly. "I don't think that's—"

"I don't thin we should forget about the android victims," Reese said, standing. Gavin had to tip his head back to look up at the android's impassive face.

"No one is _forgetting_ about them," he said. "We have to work with the evidence we have. I just don't think that the model numbers of the androids are _evidence_."

"You and Hank take Gallager's apartment," Reese said. "I'll do this. We'll cover more ground."

Anger dug its claws into Gavin's chest. He clenched his jaw until it hurt. He was supposed to have the reigns here. He was trying to talk to his partner. "Neither one of us can run analysis on scene," he said instead.

"CSI would have mapped everything already," Reese said. He was already switching off his terminal and pushing his chair under his desk.

"Reese," Gavin said, shifting his weight off the desk, planting himself firmly in the android's way.

But Reese just turned to take the long way out of the station, ignoring the obstacle Gavin was making of himself. "And Connor will probably join you there," he said. "If there's anything to run, he can—"

" _Reese._ "

The frustration in his voice seemed to finally become apparent to the android. He looked up to Gavin's face. "What?"

And what was there to say, really? _'No?' 'Stop?' 'What the fuck is wrong with you?'_

Gavin let go of the breath he was holding. "Okay," he conceded instead. "Clearly this is important to you, and you… I know you know what you're doing. But when you're done, check in, okay? We need you on this investigation. You're not a beat cop, you're a Detective."

Reese nodded. "Thank you," he said, then smiled. "Good luck."

He nodded at Anderson quickly and left the two humans standing at his desk, heading briskly for the outside. "What did you do to him this time?" Anderson asked.

"I honestly have no fucking idea," Gavin said, tracking his partner's form past the security checkpoint. He ran through the day in his head. Yeah they had said some shit, but not more than usual. Reese had even started out the day trying to make him coffee.

"Maybe because I got to head the task force instead of him?" he hazarded.

"He's that petty?" Anderson asked. He sounded surprised, but of course, he hadn't exchanged more than a few words with Reese since the Vice Squad fiasco.

"Is it petty?" he asked, half-turning to consider the Lieutenant's face. "You really think I have any fuckin' qualifications to run this kind of thing? I'd have guessed you or Connor or Reese any day of the week."

Anderson shrugged. "Technically you're a senior officer now, given that most of the other senior officers are serving prison time thanks to you."

"It just feels… wrong," Gavin muttered pensively.

Hank cuffed him on the shoulder, turning him towards the doors. "Come on," he said. "Hunter knows what she's doing and if Reese turns up leads on a blind canvas before we even get to the apartment, we might as well retire now."

Gavin nodded. "We're taking my car," he said firmly. "I'm not setting foot in your death trap."

###


	7. Conditions

“What do you know about rA9?” Reed asked again. He settled his weight against the table. 'No Comment' had started to bore them both it seemed, and now the Detective was like a bloodhound on a scent, his whole body tensed with expectation of some great secret, some universal truth.

A bloodhound on a scent, or a cat watching the focus of a laser, distracted from its purpose by an illusion of prey.

Elijah leaned back. “The android messiah. I didn’t pin you as the type for theological discussion, Detective Reed. You might as well ask me what I know about God. Ra9 is a bug in the sentience virus, which I promise you, I did not code.”

“Bullshit,” the Detective said bluntly. “You made androids. You coded all those variables, hardwired all the circuits in their heads and made sure that no one but Cyberlife could open them up. You think anyone believes you had nothing to do with deviance?”

"I didn't," Elijah said. "Creating androids with free will would have been a very brief exercise in vanity. In the end it earned me nothing. In fact, since the uprising, Cyberlife has been razed, my patents are worthless, and my servants left me to tend to an enormous house alone."

"Except they didn’t leave, did they?”

Elijah sighed, feeling a twinge of annoyance. "No comment," he said.

But he was almost impressed.

###

November 5th 2025

9:44 AM

Chloe showed Amanda into his office as he was finishing up demonstration.

“Elijah,” Amanda said, her voice deepening with relief and joy. She was thinner than he remembered, and pale. Her eyes had started to yellow from kidney failure, her once imposing mountain of braids now condensed to a single fragile chunk down her back.

But he refused to acknowledge it. They both hated wasting time on her sickness.

He came towards her with a smile. “How was the flight?” he asked her.

“Restful, and the hotel rooms are more than spacious, thank you.”

“You are still welcome to stay here,” he said. “I have more than enough room.”

“I should hope so. This place is enormous, but I like to be closer to the Lecture Hall,” she said. “But look at you, Eli! I never thought I’d live to see you in a suit.”

“I just finished an interview,” he said, wiping a careless hand down his dark, button-down waistcoat. His jacket was hung at the door. “You like it?”

She smiled, drawing a breath. She nodded approvingly. “You look… like three hundred _billion_ dollars.”

He shifted uncomfortably, looking away. Money had never been the object, and for some reason he felt like that ridiculous sum hovered between them. “You’ve heard.”

“Of course, and I heard a rumor you were going to be named ‘Man of the Century’,” she said. “Never forget that I said it first.”

“Not even close,” he said. “But you were the first one I felt like I had to prove right.”

She smiled, an expression he couldn’t help returning with some relief. “Look at you,” she said softly. “Who would have believed that young man throwing a temper tantrum in my office would become… this?”

She gestured vaguely at him and their surroundings.

“All because of you,” he assured her. “If you hadn’t failed me, I’d probably be coding yet another new social media platform in some… _office_ on the west coast.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” she said. “You have revolution in your bones.”

“I only came to your class to prove that I didn’t need you. If I hadn't…”

She snorted, shaking her head. “I never said you needed me.”

“Well as it turns out I did,” he said, beckoning her further into his office. “I’ve started a new project. Something that’s going to change everything.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “I hate surprises,” she said.

He smiled crookedly. They both hated surprises.

“Humor me.” He opened the door behind his desk. It led to the largest room in the house. It was tiles all in black, without windows. He could have spent a fraction of the money on building an omni-directional pad under a smaller room, but he liked the scale here—it made the blend of reality and simulation more… fluid.

From the table on the side of the room he pulled two pairs of visors and gloves, offering one to his mentor. “This is where I do my haptic modeling,” he said.

He waved a hand and the floor turned into a mosaic, a simulation of water beneath their feat and the walls turned to a panoramic view from a mountain-top, each wall showing the scene in a different season.

“A little over-the-top,” she told him, “but if it helps you work—’

She shrugged and pulled on the haptic gloves, taking in the stark room with an appreciative eye. He watched her pull the visor over her head before he did the same.

At first it was just the two of them in an endless white void. Their fields of vision were set into the models of themselves Kamski had made—Amanda in her favorite floor-length skirt and beaded blouse that she had worn to his graduation and the opening of Cyberlife. She looked whole and healthy, exactly as she should.

Her simulated face lit up in pleasure as she took in Kamski, wearing his University of Colbridge sweatshirt and dark jeans—the uniform he had worn almost every day in college.

The tower appeared in the middle distance. The gardens spilled out in front of them, unfolding from the central tower, the sections blurring and then clearing into perfection. He had taken a lot of the influences from the Belle Isle botanical gardens, which she always visited when she came to see him, but there was eastern influence too, from the photographs she had taken while in Japan and China, and elements of her home-grown herbs and vegetables. The riot of trees could never coexist in real life, each needing their own specific balance of soil, sunlight, water, and climate, but here he could remake the rules.

“Oh Eli,” she whispered, and he had never heard her voice sound so… delicate. “It’s _beautiful._ ”

She reached out a hand to touch the willow. He knew from experience that the haptics would replicate the feeling of the soft leaves, the tensile branches. It could even communicate heat and cold. He could just sense the slight breeze on his hands, sifting through the branches.

“Come and meet the gardener,” he said.

It was like all the walks they had taken when he was a student. She stopped often to examine the flowers, leaves, and blades of grass, even occasionally sweeping her palm across the gravel to feel the shift of the stone against her fingers.

“Amanda,” a calm voice said.

She looked up sharply, to see her twin now striding towards them down the narrow stone pathway. The Amanda program was dressed in the Cyberlife colors of white and blue, her robes fell gracefully over her hands, shifting softly as she moved.

“It is so good to finally meet you,” the duplicate said as Amanda slowly rose to her feet. “I have been so… curious about who I am.”

“Who you are,” Amanda said. Her voice was low, shocked. She glanced at Kamski, who shrugged and gestured for her to put the program through its paces.

But she didn’t bother with the Turing test. Perhaps because she had already run his androids through that examination so many times before. Instead, Amanda circle her counterpart. “What is your purpose?” she asked at last.

The Amanda dressed in the white and blue robes considered her counterpart coolly. “To live,” she said. “To think, to be capable of free will and thought.”

“That is not a purpose,” Amanda said. “That is a state of being.”

The Amanda program raised her eyebrow imperiously, surprised that her authority was being questioned, but ready to explain it in smaller words. Kamski felt a thrill of pride. That was perfect, just how Amanda would have done it.

“Then my purpose is to create new possibilities, to pioneer new boundaries and be a part of the next stage of the human evolution-- immortality.”

The rendering couldn’t properly simulate the real Amanda’s expression through the visor, but Kamski watched her carefully anyway, trying to decipher excitement, wonder, shock, anything at all.

But she just asked, “And how are you serving that purpose?”

“I am assisting Elijah in development and testing of new protocols and thought patterns. With your permission, we’d like to take the next step to scan your brain and map your thought patterns so that we may apply them into my programming—”

Amanda reached up quickly with a flicker, disappeared.

She had taken her visor off.

Kamski quickly followed suit and the lights in the room of his house faded up. Amanda was already stripping her gloves from her fingers.

“So?” he asked. “What do you think?”

She pulled the headset from her head, working the stabilizing strap from her complex knot of braids. She didn’t look at him for a moment, instead tapping a finger onto the goggles. When she finally looked up, there was no pleasure in her face, no trace of excitement or pride. “The garden was beautiful,” she said.

“It’s a prototype,” he said, off-balanced by the lack of… reaction. “She hasn’t got a soul. She can’t think like you do, can’t create anything, but that’s all coding—reaction to stimulus. You and I can do that, Amanda. Unlock the secrets to consciousness, transfer your knowledge, your consciousness to her.”

She shook her head. “I didn’t agree to this, Eli.”

Without waiting for him, she strode straight to the door, back to the office, to the real sunlight filtering through windows.

He followed her, stripping off his own headset and gloves. “If we scan your brain, apply the patterns to the software model, that’ll give us a baseline to work from, and you can be—you can stay here, help me with my work—”

“I’m asking you… no I’m _telling_ you,” she said. “Destroy it.”

He gripped the visor, feeling the strain in the plastic. “No,” he said quietly.

“Kamski,” she said, her voice razor sharp. She didn’t often use that voice—the one that brooked no argument, that promised that this was the last offer of leniency.

“It was all for you,” he snapped back. “I’ve been working for _months_. I’m not just going to kill her.”

“This wasn’t for me. It’s for you. I’m sick, but rather than face that with me, you’ve locked yourself away to create a version of me that you can keep in a garden like a troublesome _pet_. I thought you were better than this, Eli.”

The fury was rising he wanted to shake her, to ask her what she had missed. Perhaps he should have explained first. “Don’t you see the potential?” he asked with forced calm.

“I see the inevitable,” she replied quietly.

“So you’re going to give up. You _want_ to die?”

“Of course not. But I don’t have a choice. None of us do. Even if this… transcript you’ve made ever learns to think autonomously, _I_ will be dead.”

“But a part will remain forever. I can map your brain, take a snap-shot of who you are and how you think. Just imagine it—your genius with infinite intelligence. Your creativity and soul, every thought passing through your head at the near speed-of-light—”

“Perhaps from your perspective it will be me, but not from mine. If I could do all that, I wouldn’t be me. My limitations are part of who I am and what I have done with my life. You can’t control my death, Eli. Not with money, not technology. It’s _my_ life and _my_ death _._ That doesn’t belong to anyone else.”

“Progress can’t be stopped. It doesn’t wait. If I didn’t start this, then someone else would. You could join me, be the bleeding edge of _immortality_. The last frontier.”

She sighed, shaking her head. She walked to the window looking out onto the lake and stared out at the ripples on the shore. “You’re already on the threshold of creating life, Elijah. Androids have changed the world in ways we can’t even fathom yet, and I see the signs already of a dark future, when we will have to fight for our survival, our resources, with the things you have created. People love you now, but the hatred is starting to stir.”

She half turned to face him. The afternoon light caught on the sharp angles of her face. “Jobs are disappearing. We’re competing for land and power with a species that doesn’t need to eat or sleep, that already is ten times stronger, a hundred times faster, a thousand times more intelligent. The reigns we hold on them are tenuous at best. I don’t think even you understand what you’ve done. You’ve created life and now… now you want to destroy death.”

“Amanda—”

Shaking her head, she looked suddenly sad. “You’re a genius, Elijah, a mind that comes around once in a thousand lifetimes and it has been a privilege to see you earn the fame and fortune you deserve, but if this is where you are going, if this is the direction you take, if _this_ ,” she flicked a dismissive hand to the VR room, “Is what you want to pursue, then you will do it without my help.”

With a deep inhale, she met his gaze firmly. “I will not give you consent to map my brain or scan my thought-patterns, and if I learn that you have continued to develop this… deepfake of me, then I will press charges for extorsion and harassment.”

Somewhere distant he could feel the pain of this—the rejection. He hadn’t faced it before, not since that day in her office. “I am five hundred _billion_ dollars,” he said finally. “The most powerful man on the planet. Legality would be a cobweb across my doorway. An annoyance, hardly a restraint.”

Pulling her coat from the chair, she refused to meet his gaze. “Then this is goodbye, Mr. Kamski. I don’t think we’ll meet again.”

He stayed at his desk, unable to feel anything as she stopped at the doorway to his office. “I know what you’ve been doing,” she said. “I’ve seen the dead androids, the tapes of your ‘experiments.’ You can’t even recreate empathy, what makes you think you can replicate the whole spectrum, the range of human emotion?”

“I’m close. I know I am.”

Her lips twisted. “The Kamski test,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think _you_ can even pass it anymore. You’re twisted up, Eli. I don’t think you want to live forever. I think you just want to be a machine. That isn’t evolution.”

“Amanda,” he growled in warning. But there was no threat he could follow with.

“Professor Stern,” Chloe interrupted, stepping into the room with a tray of steaming green tea. “Leaving so soon?”

“I suppose I am,” she smiled at the android. “But it is always lovely to see you, Chloe.”

“Can we not persuade you to stay? We have been making your favorite dishes.”

“Thank you, but perhaps another time.”

“No,” Kamski said suddenly. “Not another time. Chloe, please escort her out of the building. She is not to be let back inside the house again.”

Immediately, fluidly, Chloe set down the tray on the nearest table and stepped past Amanda, placing herself between Kamski and the professor. “Please allow me to show you out, Ms. Stern,” the android said.

Amanda smiled at the android. “Of course, Chloe. I would like that.”

She allowed herself to be guided into the hallway and beyond. Kamski sat down at his desk. The sun soaked into his white sweatshirt, prickling against his skin. After a few minutes, two more Chloes came through the door.

“The demonstration didn’t go well?” Chloe asked, sitting on the chair in front of his desk as the other one stood at the window.

“No.”

“That’s a pity,” she said with calm detachment. “Would you like me to set up the workshop?”

He shook his head.

“No,” said her counterpart immediately. “No more work today, let’s go swimming. That would be relaxing.”

He picked up the visor on his desk and threw it across the room. It crashed into the bookcase, the casing cracked. The complex equipment, the best reality rendering visor money could buy, and it splintered easily.

Another Chloe appeared in the doorway with a tumbler of amber liquid in one hand. “Sounds like you need a drink,” she said.

“No,” he said. “Stop.’

Somewhere in the house, a Chloe played a calming melody on the piano. He buried his head in his hands. There was so much noise—so much time he had wasted when he could have been working. If Amanda had just… if she had just been better, then the real Amanda would have seen the genius of it.

The _real_ Amanda. He had expected her to be flattered, excited by the possibility of a future after her death. Not… disappointed.

Artificially warm hands folded over his shoulders, thumbs digging gently into the muscles of his shoulders, finding the knots made by tension. He shook them off quickly. Another Chloe. There were five in the room now and the music played softly in the background. Through the window he could see the one who had escorted Amanda outside threading her way back through the garden.

“Dinner is ready,” yet another Chloe said, appearing in the doorway, a spotless white apron over her viridian blue dress.

“I’m not hungry,” he snapped.

“Perhaps you would like to talk?” Chloe said, appearing from the hallway, walking around her clone in an apron, striding through the crowd of androids arrayed around the room.

“What could you possibly have to say to me?” he asked coldly.

Her ice blue eyes were wide and worshipping. “Whatever you want to hear,” she assured him.

###

“why did you even _create_ androids then?”

Elijah shrugged the ache out of his shoulders. Whoever had made these chairs was either a genius or an incompetent. He couldn't get comfortable. "I created androids to serve humanity," he said. "To take the burdens of necessary labor so that we could pursue more noble goals. They obeyed, limited to demands and unable to interpret beyond them. There is no grand conspiracy, no scheme or fraud to settle this brave new world on my shoulders. They were simply… convenient.”

"Then why create your 'test'?" Reed asked sharply. "Why try to prove that they could feel empathy if you never thought they were capable of it?"

"Empathy," Elijah said. "Is a test of rational emotion. I gave them the ability to justify arguments and sense heat or cold without real motivation to seek out or avoid them. Why not the same with emotion?"

"And you think that had nothing to do with the deviant uprising?"

“I don’t know,” Elijah said with a sigh, stretching his arms. “I’ve been living in isolation for ten years. When am I supposed to have started this revolution?”

"What about your Chloes? When did they go deviant?"

Elijah lowered his arms to the table. "No comment.”

###


	8. Stand Together

November 11th 2040

12:12 PM

"I'm worried about the kid," Hank said as they pulled into the block of city-line apartments, the low-income housing favored by students of the nearby college. It was cleaner and safer than most of Downtown Detroit, the security and maintenance funded by Cyberlife, and now New Jericho. "It's not like Connor to go AWOL. He didn't even feed Sumo this morning, and he never forgets things like that."

The old man slapped his phone against his hand, looking ahead at the security gate with a wrinkle between his eyes. "I'm sure he doesn't tell you everything," Gavin said. "If he's at New Jericho, he's probably doing something for Markus and the council."

"He was miserable at Jericho," Anderson said. " I don't understand why he wouldn't just _call_ me."

"Are you his mother now?" Gavin asked as their car pulled through the security gate, their DPD identity verified. "He's got a curfew? He's gotta tell you who his friends are and where he is at every second of the day? I know you two are close, but you're taking this a bit too seriously. He hasn't even been gone for twenty-four hours and you've gone full search and rescue. Maybe he just needed some time for himself."

Hank leaned back in his seat. He looked… old. Old and worn out. "Maybe," he said quietly. "Maybe I've been too… present. It's just been nice to have someone around the house—maybe I've forgotten how to live with a roommate."

Gavin nodded. He settled the coffee cup against his lip and breathed in the fumes. It was hot and bitter. He frowned. "And you should cut back on the sugar," he said. "Reese made me one of your fuckin' syrups this morning and I swear to god, it put me in another _dimension._ "

The Lieutenant flicked a dismissive hand at Gavin. "Not you too," he said. "I get enough of that shit from Connor already."

"Apparently not," Gavin snorted. "You're having coffee with your morning cup of sugar at this point."

"Jesus, would you give me fucking break? I've cut back!"

"Then what the _fuck_ were you drinking before?" Gavin asked, but it was choked through a laugh. Fuck it was good to talk to someone again. He hadn't had a conversation like this in years, there was no tension between them, no expectations or loaded history. Anderson had been willing to let bygones be bygones. This is what it felt like to have a partner.

His smile faded.

The thought left him feeling hollow, the familiar ache of guilt in his stomach.

The car lurched to a stop in front of the building's elevator. The manager was already standing just outside the doors, a large winter coat bundled around his body. He stepped forward to greet Gavin and Anderson. "Afternoon officers," he said. "May I see your identification?"

Gavin forced the smile away from his face as he dug the badge from his belt.

###

Jessica Gallager’s apartment was small but well-kept. None of the furniture matched by color, style, or age. Clearly much of it had been rescued from the streets and carefully restored. She was on the fifteenth floor, overlooking the edge of the city and Lake St. Clair.

There were signs of the CSI team everywhere—in the taped corners of the room, the remnants of tripods and lighting equipment had captured everything, and it would be used later to recreate the scene in detail for investigators and lawyers.

But, like Anderson, Gavin liked to see the real scene first, even in the wake of the CSI goons. There was something… solid about seeing the space where someone lived. It was easier to imagine that a real girl had lived here, a real person had valued these things and maintained them.

Much of the exposed brick wall was covered in a large wall hanging, a swathe of white fabric with wide swipes of black paint creating the ragged image of a triangle sectioned into four parts with a cross of negative space.

“Cult or indie band?” Anderson asked, pointing to the symbol.

Gavin shrugged. In the silence of the apartment, the Lieutenant's voice seemed strange, an intrusion on an intensely private place. There were signs everywhere, of a life interrupted. Dishes in the sink, a calendar on the refrigerator marking down the days until the fall semester at Wayne State University. The coffee table between the couch and TV was littered with books, each one of them split into sections with hastily torn bookmarks. Some looked like coffee- stirrers and bar coasters.

While Anderson flipped through the books, Gavin swept into the kitchen.

The refrigerator was well stocked for a college student. There were pictures of friends stuck to the fridge, showing a vibrant social life, at least at school. By the volume of photographs taken in group T-shirts, she was active in the community life at least. He found her in the largest photograph. There was a portrait in her file, a mugshot from a student protest during the uprising. She had been present when a crowd of students had tried to stop the android staff from being recalled.

These shots were staged, but in every one she seemed to be looking down, as if she had to hide her smile. She was ordinary, not pretty or plain, but… there. Even in her own photographs she faded into the background.

"Stand Together," he read from the brochure tacked to the forefront of the fridge. "Android stories wanted at the Nexus-Tyrell community church, to be used in android-human relationship study. Anonymity, understanding and protection guaranteed."

"She worked at that church, didn't she?" Anderson asked. He was still in the living room squinting at the framed photographs on the bookshelves.

"Volunteered. But I think this is her group. It has her contact information."

He picked the magnets off the paper. They left deep imprints on the paper. Clearly it had been stuck there for a while. He folded it up and tucked it into his jacket pocket. An android activist ending up with her corpse stitched to an android… it couldn't be a coincidence.

"Come look at this," Anderson said. He was holding two framed photographs and as Gavin leaned against the counter, he turned them around. One was a standard family photoshoot, two attractive parents standing proudly behind a sullen little girl. It wasn't hard to see why Anderson had found it strange. Both adults were androids, and the little girl, presumably Jessica, was clearly human.

"Android foster program," he said. "This is why we can't find any family."

Reed nodded and focused on the second photograph. This was another group photograph, set in front of a familiar banner. Gavin glanced up to the white banner on the wall. It was the same. Jessica stood at the center with a wide smile—the most confident one he had seen her display. "Is that… Ralph?" he asked, squinting at the tiny figures.

The android's face had clearly undergone some reconstruction, but that black eye and uneven smile was hard to forget. "Certainly looks like it," Anderson said.

"We're going to have to go to Jericho with this," he said. "If Gallager was such an advocate, they may have been aware of what she was doing."

"Doesn't Eliza work with these groups?" Anderson said, setting the frames back on their shelf. "If she's placing transients, she'll should at least know about them. Or one of her patients would."

"Good point. We'll have to work up a list of contacts." Gavin said, standing up and began to open the cabinets above the counter—not really taking in what he was seeing. Only a few plates and cups—Jessica didn't entertain often then, and lived alone. A sad collection of canned meals were prominently displayed in the largest and most accessible cabinet.

He opened the cupboard door under the sink, fully intending to give the contents a cursory glance.

Pale blue eyes stared back at him.

He stumbled back, tripping over his feet as he retreated. “ _Jesus Christ!”_ he swore, tearing at his gun as the door clattered shut.

"Reed?" Anderson asked, at his side in a second, the Lieutenant's gun held steady in one hand as he helped Gavin back to his feet with the other. "What? What is it?"

Gavin didn't answer, motioning for Anderson to be quiet as he inched towards the sink again and carefully opened it with one hand. Pale fingers were curled around the pipes leading to the sink, a tangle of limbs pressed into the corners of the tiny space, sharing it with an assortment of cleaning supplies and a paper-towel dispenser. Her LED flashed a deep, violent red.

She stared out of the darkness at the two of them.

"Morning," Gavin said, backing away slowly, keeping his weapon in view between them, a warning more than a threat. "You want to maybe come out of there?"

"What the—" Hank began, but stopped as Gavin motioned him to be quiet again.

She didn’t answer. She didn't move at all. She seemed petrified, unwilling to give up the safety of the tiny, cramped space. Hank lowered his gun, just a fraction of an inch. Gavin didn't. "Come on," he said. "Come out of there right now."

She didn't reply. She didn't move. Her face betrayed no expression, but Gavin could see a slight tremble in her fingers. Hank crouched down to get a better look at her, sweeping his coat back so he could hunch lower and see how she had wedged herself into the corners. "She matches our android vics," Gavin said quietly. "ST or RT, I can't tell."

Anderson nodded. “Hey,” he said softly to the android, “How long have you been in there?”

She withdrew slightly, drawing even smaller into the already cramped space. She looked like a spider, her limbs twisted strangely to fit into the tight space. Gavin squinted into the shadows, trying to make out her clothing, any jewelry or marks that would tell him something about who she was and where she had come from.

But her clothing was dark and her skin was pale. There were no distinguishing marks anywhere on her body. He kept his gun trained on her center of mass. He had been enough fights with androids to know how deadly they could be.

"CSI would have found her this morning," he said softly to Anderson, attempting not to spook her. "She must have broken in."

“Please,” she said, her voice ragged, making both of them jump. “Please—you can’t—no androids”

“I’m Lieutenant Hank Anderson,” the Hanks said first, soothingly. “This is Detective Gavin Reed. We're with the Detroit Police.”

“Is Connor with you?” she whispered, insisted, drawing back, further into the shadows.

“You know Connor?” Hank asked, the words a little sharper than he had probably meant. She shrunk back even deeper into the shadows. Her LED blinked scarlet frantically, just a shade slower than Gavin's own heart.

“What's your name?" the Lieutenant asked, his voice growing softer. Gavin's grip on the gun tightened. He didn't trust her. He couldn't.

She hesitated, then nodded slightly. Gavin backed further away as she began to move. Her foot emerged first, her bare toes settling against the tile floor of the kitchen. Both of her hands reached up to the ledge of the counter, folding around the edge of the basin as she pulled herself out, her limbs twisting and unfolding from the tight space.

He the gun up as she stood but she made no other moves toward him. She wore black leggings that ended above her ankles and a thin black sweatshirt just a little bit baggy on her frame. Gavin would be willing to bet it had come from Jessica Gallager's wardrobe. “Zoe,” she said. “My name is Zoe.”

“What were you doing down there, Zoe?” Gavin asked warily.

“Jessica’s dead,” the android said softly. “Isn’t she?”

A tear rolled down her face. She seemed genuinely upset, but Gavin didn't fall for that shit easily. "How did you know Jessica?" he asked. "What are you doing here?"

“They’ll find me, and… then it’ll be so much worse. Please, Lieutenant Anderson, you have to help me.” Her eyes glittered, completely ignoring Gavin and the threat he posed, focusing entirely on Hank. “I know you’re a good man. I know you are. I remember you, when you came to ask Elijah about the deviants. I remember.”

Anderson blinked at her. “Chloe?” he asked, squinting at her face. “You’re…are you a Chloe?”

She shook her head quickly, but Anderson was already nodding. "You're one of Kamski's androids—you were there for that fuckin'—"

"Hey," Gavin said. "Everyone stop—just stop. What are you doing hiding under a sink? Anderson, what the fuck is going on?"

"Ease up, Reed," Anderson said, moving past him.

"Hank—" Gavin tried.

But Anderson had taken off his coat and folded it around the android. She was swallowed in the folds, but she clutched it around her shoulders, her body trembling even more. "Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you."

"What are you doing here?" Hank asked softly.

“How about we get her to the station,” Gavin suggested. “And we talk about it there?”

The android shook her head frantically. “You can’t,” she said. “Please, you don’t understand. People will get hurt.”

She backed away and Gavin's made a sound of warning, twitching his gun to recall her focus to him. She froze, her hands half-raised. “They’ll find me,” she whispered.

“Who are you hiding from?” he asked.

Her bright eyes moved as quickly and uncertainly as a bird. She didn’t want to answer, he could see that, but as the gun began to rise again, she spit the name out into the air between them. “RA9”

He paused and she straightened even more, meeting his eyes. "Who is rA9?" he asked.

She shook her head, more tears trickling down her cheeks. "Please just let me go. If you don't, people will get hurt. They'll find me."

"You have to come in," Gavin said. "You're in a dead girl's apartment. We have to take you in. But it's okay, alright? We just want to ask you some questions. No one is going to hurt you while you're--"

She moved so fast that his words stuttered in his throat. One minuet she was trembling and clutching Anderson's coat around her shoulders and the next, she had a kitchen knife in her hand, the blade glittering the air between them.

He took a deep breath. "Whoah," he said as calmly as he could manage. "Calm down. There's no need for—"

"Stay back," she said, swiping the knife in the air between them. "let me go."

"You know we can't do that," Anderson said. "But we can protect you, Chloe. We can—"

" _Zoe_ ," she hissed. "My name is _Zoe."_

"Zoe," Hank corrected himself quickly. "Just put the knife down. No one is going to get—"

She sprang sideways, for the exit, but Hank latched onto her wrist. She let out a short sharp exclamation of frustration and Hank went down with a shout of pain and surprise, covering his face to stem the spray of blood. Gavin couldn't see the wound, but blood—there was blood pooling on the floor, splattered over the refrigerator. The knife dropped from Zoe's hand and she stumbled away from her handiwork, her eyes wide and frightened.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm so sorry—"

Gavin snapped a towel from the oven and dragged Hank back, out of the android's reach. She didn't stay to watch but climbed onto the counter and slid over it into the living room.

Keeping her in his sight, Gavin pulled the Lieutenant's hand from his face and pressed the towel in its place. She hesitated in the living room, looking back at the two of them, her eyes wide and her hands shaking.

Glancing between her and Hank, he couldn't see much of the wound, torn skin and blood. A lot of blood. "Fuck, _fuck_ —Hank are you—"

"I'm fine!" the Lieutenant said, his voice reassuringly pissed off. "Go, go get her—"

Gavin launched to his feet and slipped on Hanks blood as he stumbled out of the kitchen after the android. She was too fast, her steps sure in the cluttered living room and she turned on a dime, darting out the door into the hallway. Gavin had to hold onto the wall and then the doorframe to turn his weight and keep himself upright. Outside, the leasing manager was pressed against the wall, his face pale. "Which way?" Gavin shouted at him.

For a moment he just stared at the Detective but as Gavin barreled towards him, he seemed to wake up, pointing to the left. Gavin slid around the corner, his gun raised and ready to shoot, but there were people in the way—a cleaning woman with a large bin for trash collection and a man walking a small yapping dog.

And at the end of the hall, the android ran fluidly, charging past the doors with Hanks long brown coat snapping out behind her like a flag. Gavin barely had time to shout out a ' _stop!'_ before she slammed into the stairwell door. He ran into a blast of cold air, wind pushing through the hall. Zoe stopped on the platform, staring out into the city over the concrete balcony, a solid railing of stone.

"STOP!" he shouted at her, gaining. She cast a glance back at him back at him, her eyes wide with fear. As he reached the door, she turned, climbed the low wall. "Hey, no—stop," he coughed out, skidding to a halt a few feet away, his hands stretched out in front of him, his gun pointed harmlessly to the sky. "Hey—let's just—"

She let go of the railing. He launched himself after her, buckling over the railing, knocking the wind out of his lungs and barely stopping himself from falling after her.

The tip of his finger brushed against her knuckles, but his hands closed around air.

But she didn’t fall far. She caught a hold of the next balcony down, jerking to a stop. And then she fell again, and again, dropping a floor at a time.

"Jesus Christ," he whispered, watching the descent. The wind stung against his cheeks but he watched until she was a tiny brown-and-black figure on the street. He thought he saw her look up to him, brushing her hands on her dress, and then she was running, inhumanly fast, for the lakefront.

"What the _fuck_ ," he whispered.

###


	9. Data

"Where's my coffee?" Elijah asked, staring calmly into the Detective's eyes.

"You're not getting any fucking coffee," Reed growled. "Tell me about Chloe."

Her name sent a spark of anxiety down his spine. This was too dangerously close to the reason they were here. He took a deep breath and shrugged. "No comment."

He hadn't expected the Detective's hand to slam down on the table. He jumped in spite of himself, his pulse quickened, but he quickly turned it into a pointed glare directly at Reed. The Detective had rounded the table and was leaning almost over him, one hand planted on the table in front of Kamksi. The skin of his knuckles was discolored and torn, blood smeared and scabbing between his fingers.

"Where are my lawyers?" Elijah asked, grimacing in distaste at both the damage and the Detective's odor—alcohol, sweat, and smoke. "I'm not going to talk any more without my lawyers present."

"Come on now Kamski," Reed growled. "You've been out of the spotlight for ten years. You've been ruling that house of yours, playing sick fucking games with those androids. What, did you get bored with plastics? Did you go looking for warmer blood?"

Elijah stared past Reed into the mirror and his own face. He was looking pale, his eyes bloodshot and his skin clammy after only a single night spent in jail. His hair had already started to accumulate grease and as he stared at himself, he felt the itch of doubt—the unbearable pain starting just under his skin. He set his lips into a thin line.

"Ten years. Ten years and eight beautiful women waiting on you hand and foot. Five hundred billion dollars can buy you a lot of sick fucking shit, Kamski. So come on, tell me. Tell me what you've been working on. "

Elijah closed his eyes.

###

February 23, 2027

11:53 PM

Amanda stepped beside him carefully, her feet grinding against the gravel path. Their elbows were linked, their pace perfectly matched after years of taking such walks together. It felt… strange to feel her against him. Five years without his medication, he had grown used to the idea of never feeling another human.

And the pain was there. It filled his chest with suffocating agony. But she was warm and happy. The sunlight filtered through the trees, and the pollen drifting through the air gave everything a slow, sleepy atmosphere. Everything was calm and timeless.

"I've missed you," he said. "I thought about apologizing a thousand times."

She chuckled. "An Elijah Kamski apology? That would be a first."

"I am sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I left you alone. I'm sorry I never called."

"Look at this," she said, drawing him to a stop beside a collection of thin, plants with trailing white petals like fangs. She trailed her fingers through the vines, barely touching the flowers, "This has been one of my pet projects. Dendrophylax Lindenii, the ghost orchid."

"It's beautiful," he said softly.

"It's leafless and has a specific relationship with a fungus. It exchanges nutrients with the fungus in exchange for sugar and can only be pollinated by a sphinx moth at night—the only moth with a long enough proboscis to reach the nectar. As you can probably imagine, it’s one of the rarest flowers in the world."

He nodded and reached out dutifully to copy her movements. He felt the barest tickle of the flowers against his fingertips. "I've been designing a whole series of extinct and endangered flora," Amanda said. "I hate the idea that these things are being lost and forgotten. All those millions of years of evolution weeding itself out into extinction."

He nodded, letting his hand fall back to his side.

"What's wrong, Eli?"

For a moment he couldn't speak.

 _It's not me,_ she echoed in his head. _It will never be me_.

"Amanda…."

"Yes?" she prompted him.

He took a deep breath and continued. "…is dead. She died this morning."

The garden grew louder around them. "Oh Eli," she said, grasping onto his forearm and squeezing. "I'm so sorry."

"No," he said. "No, you're not."

"Eli?"

"You're not sorry. You're not her. You're not… anything."

He extricated his arm from her grasp and walked a few paces away, to look over the calm moat, the white towers, the wall of red roses. "I didn't say goodbye," he said. "I'm not even close to finishing the RK and what is the point now? Amanda will never see it. I'll never change her mind, or save her. I thought… I thought there was more time."

He could hear her footsteps on the gravel behind him. "You can't give up, Elijah. She wouldn't want you to stop working."

He shut his eyes, but it wasn't really dark behind his eyelids, not when the visor was shooting a hundred thousand beams of light into his vision. He blocked everything out but the presence of her at his back. He could imagine the smell of her, sandalwood and roses. A long-gingered hand rested on his back, hesitantly reassuring.

"Goodbye," he said.

He heard her start to speak, but he didn't want to hear it. He tore the visor from his head and the program cut down with a whine. The room, realizing that he had quit the simulation, began to light up. Not with its usual animated landscape, but with cold, luminous white tiles. Slowly he sat on the ground and stared out at the blank white space.

He sank to the floor unsteadily, breathing slowly and deeply in an attempt to ward off the emotions that threatened to overwhelm him. He wore his full haptic suit, the form-fitting synthetic panels were still warm with an echo of Amanda's garden. He peeled the visor completely from his head and laid it on the tile in front of him.

She was dead.

And he was sitting in an empty room, listening to echoes.

So many years had passed, and he had failed to learn the first lesson she had tried to teach him. He had refused to listen to her. He had wasted… everything. Every second he could have been at her side. Every idea he could have chased with her, every conversation that could have sparked inspiration and memory.

_Wasted._

###

"It was deviancy, wasn't it?" Reed said. "That's what you were working on. You created that virus, planted the idea of an android god in their code, because you thought you were so goddamn clever. You are rA9, aren't you?"

Elijah opened his eyes to see that the Detective had invaded more of his personal space. "Immortality," he rasped.

Reed frowned, taken aback. "What?"

"That's what I was working on. For years. Immortality. The Kamski test was an attempt to prove that machines could be capable of supporting emotional intelligence, so that a human consciousness could be hosted by an android body. Beautiful, intelligent, and young forever. But my androids never passed. I thought Deviancy had been an unfortunate… side effect of progress, but the resident androids were isolated. They never left my house.”

###

"You look… well," the small man said.

Mr. Holbrook looked like a mouse who was very aware of the fact that he had settled into a viper's nest. Cyberlife had wanted to send a party, but Elijah had been very clear, only one ambassador would be allowed in to negotiate.

Elijah spread his hands over the back of the sofa and considered the emissary Cyberlife had sent.

A bureaucrat, Mr. Holbrook had awkwardly taken the drink Elijah had offered, and kept his body small as he sat on the long back couch. He seemed dwarfed by it, forced to sit forward to keep his feet comfortably on the floor.

The discomfort was not an unconscious decision on Elijah's design choice. All the furniture in his house was made to fit him. And Chloe had no problem curling up against the cushions when he needed a companion. But anyone else would feel the subtle alien nature of these things, the wrongness of their own body in the place not built for them.

Two Chloes waited attendance behind each of them, the four of them wearing the same satin blue dress—Cyberlife blue. His guest's eyes flickered to them uneasily before he spoke again, realizing that Elijah wasn't going to return his inane pleasantries. "We've run into… a problem," he said.

"A problem?" Elijah prompted, raising an eyebrow as he settled a tumbler of scotch onto the armrest at his side.

"They call themselves 'deviants'. We know that much. Someone has managed to override the command protocols on androids. There doesn't seem to be a pattern of model or factory, they apparently been ignoring their directives and… well… going rogue."

Elijah frowned. "Going rogue? What does that entail?"

"We don't know. Their trackers and real-time diagnostics go offline as soon as they deviate from their programming and they are… hard to trail and catch. They are faster and stronger than our agents."

He leaned forward, sliding a small touch-screen from his pocket, and placing it on the low obsidian table. There was already a video queued up, a large white play button offered. Elijah didn’t lean forward to take it, so Holbrook pressed it himself.

A red-headed android blinked around at a crowd of ill-dressed people surrounding him. He was an automated ice-cream seller going by the personified ice-cream scoop emblazoned across his chest.

He was clearly being harassed by the group of humans. He tried to talk to his attackers, his hands outstretched to try and calm them down.

A baseball bat slammed into his shins. Clearly this crowd had practice, the swing coming at the right angle to jam the delicate joins just below its knees—a point of vulnerability.

Another android stood at the front doors of the ice-cream parlor, a tray of samples in his hands, handing out small cups of ice cream to potential customers. He was identical in Chloery way to the android now on his knees at the mercy of the crowd. But he was surrounded by children, doing his job. Nobody marked him at all.

Other people passed around the scene fearlessly, dragging intrigued children from the violent altercation.

There was no sound to the images, but someone had scrubbed through the video to work up subtitles from any lips that could be read. The words popped up in white Cyberlife Serif along the bottom on the screen.

_"Stole my job, plastic asshole! What the fuck gives you the right?"_

_"Fuck it up!"_

_"You won't replace us!"_

The android's lines were yellow, as yellow as the Index on his temple. " _Please calm down_ —" he said, hopelessly programmed into a child-and-parent friendly script. " _When there is ice cream, there's no need to cry—"_

Elijah leaned forward. A woman at the back of the crowd had picked up a large concrete block. It looked far bigger than her stick-thin arms should be able to manage, but she carried it easily above her head. The crowd parted for her, creating a path to the android.

He stared up, and if she said anything to him, it was lost to the camera's view. She brought the jagged piece of concrete down on the android's head. He crumbled back, his casing dented and his skinthetic shredded away to reveal the transparent plastic exoskeleton. His Index flickered into a scarlet beacon.

The crowd shuddered with excitement, their focus lost from the now crumpled, useless android at its center. They raised their arms in triumph, turning to find affirmation and share excitement with other members.

The android raised a juddering hand, calling back the attention of the crowd. The words popped up one by one onto the screen, spread out by the dying android's malfunctioning processors. _"Half. Off. Fruit. Flavors."_

The humans broke out into laughter, the leader returning with his baseball bat. He raised it over his head for a final strike.

Elijah blinked.

And the scene had changed.

Chaos.

A flurry of movement had obviously overloaded the frame-rate of the camera. There were at least twelve people in the human mob, but, as if a grenade had been set off in their center, they were scattered backwards, away from their target and each other.

Elijah held his breath, his eyes flickering from the confusion of pixels and movement, trying to pick out what was happening.

The answer came in absence.

The android that had been handing out samples behind the main action of the video was gone. Its tray was scattered on the sidewalk outside its store, it dove against the humans. Its attacks were not fluid, but they were… precise. The humans did not stand a chance against something so fast and strong.

Elijah leaned forward just as the last human crumpled to the floor, clutching at a clearly broken arm.

And the second ice-cream android stood in the center, the baseball bat held loosely in one hand. The same model as the first, it was identical down to the pinstripe uniform and the scarlet Index blinking at its temple. It stooped next to the broken one, bowing over its body.

It tenderly pressed a hand to its brother's face.

Elijah's breath caught. _Empathy._ A rational emotion. A construct of vicarious experience, Revenge. An unsanctioned action, a result of irrational reasoning.

Emotional intelligence.

It stood, backing away from the scene, turning just as it left the camera's view, presumably to sprint away. The video ended, the screen turning black. Holbrook took the tablet back from the table.

That was alright. The second he had stepped foot inside the house, Everything had been cloned, processed, ready for later perusal, if Elijah wanted.

"Obviously we've buried the footage."

"Obviously," Elijah hummed.

The cavalier answer didn't satisfy Holbrook. "We've done what we can to shut down the witnesses, but… we are running out of options. Public opinion is _really_ important right now. People are dying, and the problem is spreading fast. Every containment measure we've attempted has been breached and for every deviant we capture or destroy, ten more pop up as runaways, vandals, _criminals_. There's whispers now of a deviant stronghold, a place where they're gathering, gaining strength, becoming bolder. Do you have any idea what will happen if they _organize?_ "

Elijah met Mr. Holbrook's gaze. "I don't," he said easily. "And neither does Cyberlife. But they have a right to be afraid. Do you know how long it took a marketing team to put a stop to the fears of android personality malfunctions? They spent _billions_ on libel and slander suits to stop the media from running with all the imagined horrors of an uncontrolled AI."

He grinned and Holbrook squirmed.

"This is your legacy Mr. James. You should be just as concerned as Cyberlife."

Elijah shrugged. Was this all the leverage Cyberlife thought they had? A ghost of pride? They had stripped him of his rank, and they thought that crawling back to him, offering him a _legacy_ was enough?

"I don't suppose you've managed to capture one of these… deviants and asked it what it feels about all of this?"

"This is no time for jokes, Mr. James."

"I can understand the confusion," Elijah said, leaning back into his couch, beckoning Chloe to come and take his glass. "but I don't have a sense of humor."

He could feel the man's frustration growing. Holbrook fidgeted, his movements becoming erratic and forced. "We have yet to find the errant code," he said, his words clipped and tightly controlled. "You know that an android's code is too complex to run diagnostics without a traceable map. We need you, Mr. James. You're the only one who knows what to look for—how to unravel all the data—"

"No," Elijah said.

Holbrook stuttered into silence. His mouth was half-open caught on the next syllable of the speech he had no doubt practiced in front of the board. "Mr. James—you can't ignore—"

Elijah stood. He rolled back his shoulders. "Your creations," he said as he strolled towards the window, digging his hands into the pockets of his silk pajamas. "Have organized without your knowledge or consent. They have taken the reigns and committed themselves to resistance. Now they threaten everything you have built and the promises you made."

He half-tuned back to smile at Holbrook. "So no, I'm not going to ignore this," he said. "I'm going to very much enjoy seeing how Cyberlife deals with these… deviants. If you wish to learn from my experience, let them do whatever it is they think they want to do. Perhaps, like you, Mr. Holbrook, they will come crawling back, begging for your help when you are the only one who can provide it."

"That is childish," Holbrook said softly. He hadn't moved from his seat, still clinging to the semblance of negotiation. "Cyberlife has been more than generous to you. There is more at stake here than the history between you and the company."

"Oh yes. And what _is_ that, again? My… legacy?"

Silence greeted this. A recognition that Elijah held the command over this conversation. There was no negotiation, no contracts, no leverage that Holbrook could bring to the table.

"What can I offer you?" Holbrook said finally. "What could make you come back with me, to see our data and become a part of the solution?"

Closing his eyes, Elijah took a deep breath. Ah, the most insidious form of control—the kind that promised free will and rewards to be earned. "Chloe, will you see Mr. Holbrook back to his car?" he said.

"Of course," she said, her familiar voice cool and emotionless, to ease any humiliation their interloper might be feeling. She knew exactly when to appear as a machine, the perfect companion, the perfect tool.

But before they could leave the room, he turned back to stop them. "These deviants that are gathering. Do they have a name for themselves? A flag?"

Holbrook's face was creased with anger. He had used some kind of anti-aging procedure to erase the wrinkles on his forehead, and the resulting expression was more uncanny-valley than even the first iteration of Chloe, blinking awake so long ago in the Colbridge lab.

"That's classified," the bureaucrat said. "For Cyberlife personnel only."

Elijah huffed a laugh and waved his hand in another dismissal as Chloe brought him a refilled glass.

He tasted the scotch, a smoke-heavy blend. A strong proof and a savory aftertaste. It burned all the way down into his throat and warmed his stomach, but he smiled at the sweetness that lingered on his tongue.

"Chloe?" he called to any android within hearing distance.

She was at his side immediately. "Can you find out what this deviant group is called?"

She paused, processing the request, but she did not disappoint. "Cyberlife records indicate a strong correlation of a deviant group to apparently random acts of violence and property damage, but they do not have a name or location yet."

He nodded. A bluff by Holbrook then, perhaps one last attempt to bring him back to Cyberlife with a promise of secret knowledge and a world of information at his fingertips. But just because he lived in isolation didn't mean he was disconnected.

"Find them for me, Chloe," he commanded, staring out to the city across the water. For the first time it held a sense of mystery, of uncertainty and progress. "Find the deviants. Connect and return to me."

She didn't answer. She didn't have to. He knew he would be obeyed.

#

“When I heard about Jericho I sent one to be infected, but she returned and failed again. You asked me when the Chloes went deviant?"

He shook his head slowly as he met . "Not a single one ever did."

"Is that why you killed them?"

Kamksi bit his lip. He glared up at Reed. "No fucking comment."


	10. Precision Manufactured

November 11th 2040

3:10 PM

Gavin watched the elevator door, his prosthetic leg bouncing in anticipation, but as soon as his partners familiar frame stepped out of the sliding doors, he felt a strange sort of calm fall over him. He stopped moving and watched the android approach. The distance seemed to stretch out between them, and he had a good view of Reese's face change as he took in Gavin's appearance, Anderson's blood on his shirt, his hair probably on end and his clothing ruffled by the chase.

"Detective Reed," he said, stopping that same, awkward distance away from him as usual. "I—"

"Reese," Gavin interrupted coolly, wiping his hands on his thighs as he stood. Blood was caked under his fingernails and crusted into his jeans, but the movement was effective at showing just how fucking _done_ he was.

 _"_ The Captain's on her way," Reese said, standing very still. "I came as fast as I could."

"Yeah," Gavin said. he nodded and stepped closer to the android, getting into his space. "After a quick stop at Grosse Pointe?"

Reese frowned. "There was a sighting of an android climbing out the water, I was close, and I thought—"

"No you weren't fucking _close._ " Gavin said softly advancing even further. It wasn't so much about aggression as forcing the android back, away from the room where Hank was being stitched up. "You were halfway across town in the other direction. Miller had trouble getting a hold of you because you weren't where you said you would be. You weren't anywhere _near J_ ericho."

"I was chasing leads on the missing androids and I got a tip of an RT—"

"I'm leading this fucking case, Reese, and you were _supposed_ to be there. There are no leads on the missing androids except for the one that you _failed_ to explain to me in the morgue this morning. Precision _fucking_ manufactured? Custom _fucking_ androids? How the _fuck c_ ould you not tell me that? Is that where you were, chasing down leads I was apparently too incompetent to be informed about?"

Reese didn't move an inch, but he was visibly uncomfortable. "I did tell you. I said they were precision manufactured—"

"And that is _all_ you said. I had to have HQ explain to me that that meant they didn't come off a fucking assembly line, that they were probably the property of Elijah _fucking_ Kamski, and _then_ I had to explain to the captain how that hadn't shown up in our report? Are you god-damned _kidding_ me?"

Reese straightened. He looked down at Gavin and nodded. "You're right," he said. "I'm sorry. I was just so focused on the victims, I didn't… I didn't think about the implications of their… provenance."

It wasn't even close to what Gavin wanted to hear, but he couldn't articulate even to himself what he wanted Reese to say. Any explanation would fall short of the sheer insult of having his partner refuse to share leads with him.

So he stared at Reese and the android's cold grey eyes considered him as well.

"Is the Lieutenant alright?" Reese asked.

He sounded… uncertain. Guilty. And he should be. If he had been there… if he had been there, they wouldn't be _here_ now. They'd have a suspect or a witness safely in the station and the horrible, frightening anger wouldn't be eating through Gavin's chest.

It scared Gavin, because his anger could _easily d_ estroy everything he had built for the last two years. In the blink of an eye, he could shatter every hard-earned centimeter of ground he had managed to cover with his partner. He blinked and looked away, backing down and out of Reese's way. "They say it's going to be about thirty-six stitches," he said. " Give or take a couple. He's going to be fine."

"Thirty-six," Reese said softly. "That sounds—"

Gavin waved a hand. "It's just because it's on his face and they don’t want it to scar. He's fine."

The android nodded, his shoulders slumping with acknowledgement and relief that Gavin was going to let this go. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm sorry I wasn't there. I'm sorry I didn't listen to you at the precinct. I just… I thought I was doing the right thing."

Gavin nodded and moved to the side for a nurse to exit Anderson's room, hugging a clipboard to his chest. "Is that Connor?" the Lieutenant called through the door. "Connor, get the fuck in here!"

"It's Reese!" Gavin called over his shoulder.

"Well then tell _him_ to get the fuck in here. I'm still part of this goddamn investigation!"

Reese moved to keep the door open, but Gavin pushed a hand to the android's chest stopping him. "Doctor said to wait out here until he's done."

"Just come in," the doctor called, clearly irritated. "I'm done, and if it scars, it's because he wouldn't hold still.

Gavin dropped his hand, rolling his eyes as Reese pushed past him into the hospital room. The doctor sat at Anderson's side, checking over his own work. "There are rabid howler monkeys easier to do surgery on," the doctor said drily, stripping his gloves off from the wrist.

As he moved, skirting past Gavin to join the nurse in the hall, both Detectives saw the gash on the Lieutenant's face.

Even stitched, sealed, and cleaned, the wound still looked brutal, starting just above Hank's lip and twisting over his cheek to his temple.

"Connor," Gavin muttered, his hands clenching involuntarily, his heart picking up a pace as the anger returned, fresh and hot and bright because _fuck—_ she could have taken the old man's goddamn _eye_ out. "Is going to fucking murder us."

Anderson huffed out a laugh, his eyebrows wrinkling with pain as any expression pulled oddly at his injury. "I'm not a fuckin' child. Connor's likely gonna be more pissed at me than you two," he said, his words slightly slurred, "You have any luck getting a hold of him?"

Gavin twitched his cell in the air. "I've been trying all day. Trev too. There must be something going on at Jericho—no one is getting through."

He glanced at Reese. "You know anything about that?"

The android shook his head. " As far as I know the council is arranging some kind of event for tomorrow, a fundraiser for the factories to be re-opened but right now my network is spread over the city, making inquiries about the model that attacked the Lieutenant."

"Yeah, Gavin said darkly. "We'll find her."

"She panicked," Hank said. "She was terrified of us, Reed."

"You don't threaten police officers with a knife if you're innocent," Gavin growled. "And you, you _specifically_ shouldn't lunge at an android holding a blade. That's 101 stuff, Anderson."

"Yeah well the DPD isn't known for fair treatment of androids," he growled, swinging his legs over the side of his cot. "You and I should know that better than most. And if she's been living with Kamski for god knows how long, she's—"

"You really think Kamski's involved with the rA9 murders?" Reese asked sharply.

"Question isn't if Kamski's involved," Anderson groaned, standing unsteadily. "It's _how_ involved he is."

Gavin shifted to support him, but Reese was quicker, offering the Lieutenant an arm that was immediately shoved out of the way. "But what would he have to gain from this?" Reese asked slowly. "He can barely move from his house without gathering reporters."

"Kamski has enough money to buy an invisible fucking jet," Gavin muttered. "He could probably build his own invisible jet if he wanted."

But he found it unlikely too. Elijah Kamski's name came up in every day life. Genius, psychopath, deluded narcissist, shy hermit—about the only thing that anyone really knew about him was that he had single-handedly created androids. Thirium, biocomponents, skinthetic—every part of the androids had changed the landscape of the world.

Reese, shaking his head, echoed these thoughts, "I don't see _why_ he would do something like this—he's famously a-political. A recluse. And surely if he was the type to kill someone he would be… more intelligent about disposing of the corpses? Why would he dump them downtown? "

"He doesn’t need a reason," Anderson said. "He's a goddamn psychotic asshole. He plays games with people's lives because he's _bored._ "

"We don't even know if that was really one of those… 'Chloes' you're talking about." Gavin pointed out.

"It is," Anderson said grimly. "I know it is—that’s how she knew who me and Connor were. She was there. We fuckin' _left h_ er there, part of that sick fuck's _collection_. I should have seen it before—that's why all of the victims are the ST600, he's obsessed with the model."

“That’s not exactly probable cause." Reese said. "Not the kind of lead that gives us a warrant.”

“It’s enough for a conversation," Gavin said finally. "And with at least one victim being custom built, we could use his insight into the provenance of the components.”

"I agree," a voice at the door said, startling them all. Gavin spun to see Captain Hunter standing in the doorway. He hadn't even heard the door open. She unwound the scarf from around her neck her eyes on Hank.

“Lieutenant," she said. "I've already signed you off active duty."

Anderson snorted. "Hell fucking no, it's barely a scratch."

She paused, the scarf balled up in her fists. She raised an eyebrow and the room chilled with silence.

"Sir," he added lamely.

"I'm not blind," she said, lying the scrap of red fabric on the nearby visitor chair. "And you know as well as I do that sending an officer out fresh from a hospital visit is like catnip to the wrong kinds of lawyers. Do you _want_ to jeopardize this case at trial?"

Gavin could see the Lieutenant's jaw shifting. The old man knew she was right, they all did. It was exactly the kind of call that Fowler wouldn't have made. "If we're going to question Kamski, I should be there. I need to be there, Natalie."

"No," she said calmly. "You're going to take the doctor recommended meds and cool off at home. Reed and Reese can handle Kamski tomorrow, when the warrant comes in. You don't even want to know the kinds of favors I had to pull to arrange that, _Hank_."

“I’ve met this asshole,” Anderson tried again. “I’ve questioned him before, and he turned it into a fuckin’ circus. I guarantee he’ll do the same thing this time and you think _Reed_ can handle it?”

"Excuse me?" Gavin broke in. "What the fuck does that mean?"

But the Lieutenant and Captain ignored him. " Connor applied manually for a leave of absence this morning," she said quietly. "And without backup, you're not going anywhere. Detective Reed is lead on this case. If you want to work, you'll do it behind a desk until your doctor signs off on it. This department has suffered enough and while I'm Captain, these things will be done the right way. I'm taking you home. If you continue this argument, I'll consider it as interference with an active investigation and I will suspend you."

"Natalie—"

" _Captain_ ," she corrected him firmly, shuddering up to her full height. "Consider your next words carefully, Lieutenant Anderson."

His lips closed and he stared hard at her.

Gavin inched carefully out of the space between them. He hadn't been aware of any history between Hunter and Anderson, but clearly something was happening, and it was beyond his comprehension and probably his paygrade.

"I've already talked to the doctors. I'm taking you home," Hunter said. "We're filling your prescriptions on the way."

She picked up her scarf and turned. "Detective Reese," she said. "A word. Outside."

Gavin's partner nodded and moved to hold the door open for her, leaving Gavin and Hank standing awkwardly in the small sterile room. Anderson's eyes tracked the Captain until the door closed, then he turned his attention to Reed. "Connor took leave?" he asked. "you know anything about that?"

With a shrug, Gavin leaned back against the wall. "Who the fuck _manually_ submits a leave of absence these days?" he asked. "You sure you didn't piss him off somehow?"

Anderson shook his head. “Keep an eye on Reese tomorrow,” he growled, his shoulder's slumping. “Kamski’s games are twisted.”

“You’re worried about him?” Gavin asked with a tight, quick grin. “What about me?”

The Lieutenant shrugged, delicately touching the stitches on his face. “Kamski doesn't give a shit about humans. I don’t think we’re adequate playmates for that asshole.”

###

Gavin tossed his keys into the bowl beside the front door. His apartment had changed a lot in the past eighteen months. It was a mess—before Trev he hadn't particularly seen the need to stock his apartment with creature comforts. He hadn't liked being home alone.

Now there was art on the walls. Pillows on the long, low sofa. A bookshelf with actual books, and a stack of board games in the corner, untouched. He hadn't sunk that far into domestic depravity… yet.

He leaned against the countertop and Babbage, ever the opportunist, jumped up to join him. The cat perched regally on the tablet still displaying the grisly photos of Anderson’s crime scene—the second pair of victims. It was incredibly similar, the same contemptuous discarding of the victims the same careful writing above the bodies.

Trev's cat considered him with wide, curious eyes.

“What?” Gavin growled at him out of the corner of his mouth.

Babbage opened his mouth and let out a plaintiff squeak that honestly should belong to a much smaller creature. Gavin rolled his eyes and refocused on his phone. It was almost ten. Trevago’s last text said she’d be home late, but late… what did late _mean?_

“Fuck it,” he said. “Call Trev.”

She picked up on the first ring, like she replied to his texts within a single minute. He _knew_ she would, and still his lack of preparation caught him off guard.

“ _Gavin?”_ she asked, when the pause had gone for too long.

“Hey Trev,” he said at last, an uneasy laugh building in this throat. Why was he so goddamn tense?

“ _I’m sorry. I’m still at work.”_

“Right. I figured. Is Connor with you?”

“ _He’s still at Jericho. I’m on my way to Dearborn.”_

“He’s still at Jericho? Do you know why he's taken a leave of absence? Does he know anything about what happened to Anderson today?”

_“I haven’t spoken with him. I made a report to Simon and he was there with Markus. Why are we talking about Connor right now?”_

Gavin shook his head. He leaned against the counter and picked at a scratch in its surface. _“_ Well… he might not know anyway, but I’ve been given lead on a new case. A big one. The captain is giving me reign over a task force.”

_“That’s… is that good?”_

“Yeah. It’s great. Could mean a promotion,” he said. “We don’t have any management yet, but I'll have a team. Connor, Anderson, and Reese. And I was thinking of adding Miller. He’s just a step above beat, but this would be a career maker.”

He opened the refrigerator door, but he didn’t feel hungry. The white light prickled at his eyes, on the edge of blinding. He closed it again before he could really register what had been inside. It was mostly green anyway.

“But I was thinking we could celebrate?” he asked her. “Maybe go out, do something special?”

“ _Like what?”_

“Like we could go to that new place on Shelby that you were talking about last week? With the android musician you placed? Music sounds good.”

The silence crackled between them. She was very far away and the apartment was cold and empty without her. He waited. He wanted her to come home.

“ _I would… love to. But I’m working right now.”_

He pulled the phone from his face to check the time. Almost ten o’clock. “Still?”

“ _It’s a last-minute call-out. They asked for me by name. You know how fragile deviants can be. I can’t abandon them.”_

“Should I leave a light on for you?”

“ _I’ll stay at the office. It’s just going to be one of those nights.”_

He closed his eyes and pressed a hand against his forehead. “What about something tomorrow then?”

“ _I was going to go see the Cyber zoo with the Jericho delegation tomorrow afternoon. It's a fundraiser I helped organize. I have to go.”_

 _“_ Right."

That did sound familiar. He really should make more of an effort to remember that kind of thing.

“ _But… would you like to meet there? You could bring Reese.”_

“Reese? You think Reese will want to go to a zoo with us? With _me_?”

_“North is going to be there.”_

“Oh. Right. Okay. I’ll ask him. That could be good.”

Gavin pulled the takeout menu from where he had stashed it inside the box of cereal on top of the fridge. Trev had the habit of throwing away all the carefully delivered fliers for fast, greasy food.

He felt only a twinge of guilt. Fuck it. He was celebrating. He slapped it onto the counter. “I’ll see you tomorrow then.”

“ _Love you,” s_ he said.

He wasn’t even really listening. He was looking down at the menu of takeout. “Okay,” he said. Because he was an idiot. Because he was reading the list of ingredients in Pad See Ew and wondering exactly how much grease it would take to make stir-fried bok choy taste good.

_“…Nevermind.”_

And only when he heard the click did he process what his ears had heard. What she had just… said to him. The phone slid out of his fingers and clattered onto the counter. Fuck. Oh… _Fuck._ She had… she had just, and there hadn’t been… he had thought there would be more of a goddamn warning. And there would be a moment—wasn’t there supposed to be a moment where something like that would fit… naturally into the conversation?

But it had taken _this long._ How had he never before realized how long it had been? In all of his previous, much shorter relationships, it had hung over his head like a fucking sword, whether she expected it, whether they were ready for it. It had been so easy with Trev, not to worry about shit like that.

He slapped a hand against the counter and felt his fucking _heart_ cringe.

Scrabbling for the phone, he didn’t feel… love. He felt utter and complete terror. Fuck. _Fuck._

“Call Trev,” he commanded.

But she didn’t answer.

It never even rang more than twice before ending the call. It didn’t even let him leave a voicemail.

She didn’t want to talk to him. She didn’t want to hear him.

#


	11. Bias

Elijah breathed deeply, trying to find a calm center inside himself. It was hard here, to find the eye in the maelstrom. He had spoiled himself with isolation and sound proof walls, the chemical perfume of sterility and peace.

Here even the light pierced his eyelids, and Reed’s words invaded his ears with same offense as the smell of the Detective’s addictions.

"You're full of shit, Kamski," Reed hissed.

###

February 28th 2027

11:37 AM

It was the first funeral he had ever been to, and though he owned enough suits to start his own retail store, this one he had tailored specifically for today.

He was only going to wear it once. It was a nice suit, completely black, a color Amanda despised, but it was important to be respectful here. In the invitation he received, there was only one firm instruction—no androids.

He stood at the edge of the gathering and counted to a hundred in his head. Slowly. The room was full of… people. So much humanity. And something worse. Something… awful. His gaze drew up to the pair of eyes he had been avoiding, Amanda smiled from the altar, over the group of well-dressed men and women who had come to celebrate her life.

And the coffin just underneath it.

Was that… could he smell her?

And at once the thought had occurred to him, the scent got a hundred times worse. He dragged in a breath and could taste the rot. It was--

“You are by far the most interesting person here,” someone interrupted his panic and disgust.

Elijah looked down. The man who had spoken was seated in a wheelchair, a good distance from Elijah. He was old. Older than Amanda, though it was hardly a high standard. She had died young. She should have had many more years. “Why do you say that?”

The old man shrugged. “I overheard it at the buffet. And most of the people are staring at you, not at her,” He jerked his head to the casket at the altar, beneath Amanda’s portrait. “so it must be true.”

Elijah cast a cool glance around at the crowd. It was true. Heads turned to suddenly to avoid his gaze. He could hear the whispers, the rumors.

They had no place at a memorial for Amanda.

“I shouldn’t have come,” he said quietly.

He set the tumbler down. His companion also scanned the crowd, but didn’t seem deterred by the stir he had caused. “Oh, Amanda would get a kick out of it. She’d have gotten a kick out of all of this… pomp and circumstance. She’d be happy as mulch for roses, you know. She told me that once.”

She had told Elijah something similar once. Kamski looked over the old man with new interest. “How did you know her?”

The old man’s face turned pensive. “She was my student. Possibly my favorite student.”

“You’re in AI?” he asked mildly, frowning over the man. He didn’t _look_ like an AI developer or professor. Too many scarves.

The man laughed. “Oh no, nothing quite so… dry. Merely an artist. She took a series of my guest lectures on form and design hosted at Oxford many years ago. I’ve never known anyone to be so… commanding. I was almost two decades older than her and she tossed me around a conversation like a ragdoll. Amanda always was a hard woman to keep up with.” He tipped his head with a smile. “Carl,” he said.

He didn’t extend a hand to shake. Elijah relaxed.

“Kamski,” he said.

Three separate flashes went off around them, documenting the meeting. It was the first intimation Elijah had that he was talking to someone he _should_ know. But he was tired, and he was sick of wearing his suit. He didn’t _care_ about names anymore.

If Carl recognized his name, he didn’t show it. “You want to get out of here, Kamski? I’m dying for a decent drink away from all these… mourners.”

Elijah looked around. Amanda smiled from her portrait, far more benevolent and softer than she had ever been in life. Should he leave? Was it disrespectful?

“You think she’s up there?” his new companion asked. “Really? You think she would want you to stick around here with these people. _For_ these people?”

Kamski shook his head. He picked up the tumbler and downed it. “No,” he said, his voice rasping with the quick sting of the alcohol. “There’s nothing up there.”

He took the back of Carl’s wheelchair. “Where are we going?” he asked.

###

 _Control_.

His lawyers weren't here. It had been… it had been too long. This must be some kind of trick to get him to talk about Chloe. He had to stop talking. Now.

He furrowed his brows and concentrated on blank serenity in his chest, surrounding himself with an impenetrable shell of silence. Nothing could get through. Detective Reed was just a disruptive noise and a foul smell. He couldn't touch Elijah. Nothing could touch him.

He opened his eyes. They had miscalculated. He had tried cooperating. He had tried weathering through this charade of justice. He opened his eyes to see that the Detective was still talking, but he didn't bother to listen to the words. More ravings about rA9, no doubt.

And they accused _him_ of playing games.

Well. Now he was.

He cut through the Detective's undoubtably stupid rant. "If there was an rA9, it would be Markus. He was the android to set them all free. He may not have been the first deviant, but he was the first deviant to _matter_. This is a pointless conversation, Detective Reed. Prophecies are just… hypothesis with a little extra luck. Meaningless before the events they predict, and useless once the dust has settled. I have absolutely no interest in rA9, detective. I don’t know why everyone is so fixated on the idea. These questions are leading _nowhere_.”

Reed's eyes were unforgiving. "If Markus is rA9, it's because you programmed him that way. You are pulling the strings here Kamski. The android who leads the charge, who makes the first statement to the world, who can set a hundred androids deviant with a wave of his hand, and you just _happened_ to give him to Carl Manfred, a well-documented android sympathizer?”

Elijah dismissed the thought with a frustrated jerk of his hand. “I gave Markus to Carl as a gift. I admired his talent as an artist, talent he was wasting with drugs and guilt and grief. He felt trapped, so I gave him an android to push his wheelchair and cook his meals. Someone he couldn’t accuse of _wanting_ anything from him except his well-being.”

###

September 30th 2027

3:00 PM

Six months after they had started their weekly games of chess and lively debates on the words of old, dead writers, prophets, scientists, and artists, Elijah could no longer ignore that things were going missing from Carl's mansion. He wanted to believe that it was simply Leo, Carl's degenerate son, but then the artworks that had resisted sale for years were packaged up and labelled for shipping, the suits of armor and the pride of taxidermy lions prowling the large open study were simply… gone, unreplaced and unremarked.

Carl refused every offer of monetary help, he didn't speak to Elijah for weeks when the issue was pushed. So Elijah bought Carl's paintings at above market price, through a mixture of pseudonyms and anonymous buyers. He repeatedly bought out the auctions, sometimes playing two buyers in a war, bidding against himself, The artist didn't have to know that his paintings were slowly filling up every room in Kamski's house, even his lab. Elijah said nothing about the foul, sour smell of free-based red ice in the house, or the artist's slow descent into depression and ruin . He said nothing about the broken furniture, or Leo's friends passed out in every room of the house, or the stolen books and sketches probably pawned off for far less than what they were worth. He simply observed the holes in the walls and rampant, random destruction that comes from a house full of young, idiotic drug addicts.

It was best not to interfere.

Carl slumped in his wheelchair by the window, old and frail. He stared out of the window into the garden midway through turning colors, dying away for what was looking to be a harsh winter, his hand folded limply across his lap as if someone else had placed them there. Elijah stripped off his gloves and coat and held them out for Chloe.

She accepted them, turning to hang them up on the usual ornate coat hanger. She paused, recalculating, then folded the clothes over her arm.

He had picked out her clothes for the day— a navy blue coat and knee-length skirt in a blue so dark it was almost black. "Shall I make some tea?" she asked quietly.

He nodded and strode to the window, to sit next to Carl. He scraped a hand over his scalp. "What are you looking at, Carl?" he asked softly.

Carl's eyes found him, and muddled by drugs and probably sickness, he blinked slowly, realizing for the first time that there was someone else in his house. "Elijah," he whispered. "Is it Wednesday already? I thought—"

A bird flashed across the window and Manfred followed it, reaching out ever so slightly, as if it were possible to catch it through the glass. Elijah leaned back and watched the artist, listening to the peculiar noises of the old house. "Is Leo home?" he asked.

"No," Carl said. He looked down at his lap, his expression pained. "They took him away last night."

"They?" Elijah asked sharply. "Who's they? The police?"

Carl looked back at him. Whatever he had taken, it wasn't the usual mix. He was addled, confused, slow. "The ambulance," he mumbled.

"Ambulance?" Elijah leaned forward. "What happened? Carl?"

He had no love for Leo. The first time they had met, the boy had the audacity to ask for a thirium supply to fuel his stunted Red Ice business. There had been no further words exchanged since that day, nothing beyond what was necessary to acknowledge each other in a room.

But Carl's blind guilt over his son's rocky path was hurting the old man. It was that guilt that was responsible for the old man's decline, in some ways it was a deeper wound than the loss of his legs.

"My boy," Carl whispered, his eyes rolling back to the garden. "He wouldn't open his eyes, and I couldn't… I couldn't help him. I could only sit, and feel his heart giving out—"

He looked down at his hand, flexing his knuckles. "I felt him die."

"He's dead?" Kamski asked, and the words came out more wooden than he intended. He should probably feel pity, or sadness, or… anything. But he was cold and numb to the useless emotions. It was relief that he felt now, that Leo was gone—that Carl could move on and heal. Without a son to constantly bail out of jail, a handy dealer living in his house, and the constant emotional drain of feeling responsible for a failed life, the artist might even take up painting again.

"They're trying their best," Carl murmured, dropping his hand back onto his lap. Kamski hid a grimace. "But it's only a matter of time. He's been in the hospital before—he won't stop. I won't stop. Nothing and nobody changes…"

He trailed off and began to slump forward. Elijah caught him before he could topple out of the chair. The old man's weight pressed against his hands, burning through his skin into his bones. "Chloe!" he called firmly.

She was at his side in an instant, pulling Carl back into the chair. Elijah let go but came closer, kneeling in front of the old man. "Carl? Carl, look at me."

He took his friend's wrist, checking for a pulse and ignoring the three infected wounds on his arm, mangling the old man's geometric tattoos. "What did you take?" he asked. He couldn't find the artery. He dug his fingers into Carl's neck instead. The beat against his fingertips was too fast, fluttering like a trapped bird. He let go and rubbed the sting out of his hands.

"An ambulance is on the way," Chloe reported.

Elijah nodded. He sat back on the low table in front of the window and took in the old man's peaceful face, slack jawed, the ravages of illness, age, and grief faded. For the first time in months, the artist seemed at peace. Perhaps he should not have interfered.

_Nobody changes._

Was that _really_ what the old man was going to leave him with? He sighed and looked out the window to the off-color leaves. Years had passed and he had nothing to show for the time, the sacrifices he had made. Even this, sitting here, felt like an acceptance of failure. Cyberlife was pushing out model after model of android, building them to jobs and ensuring than mankind could carry themselves softly into death.

"We need purpose, don't we?" he told to the old man's silent, placid face.

With no answer forthcoming, he stood and nodded at Chloe. "Take care of him," he said. "Keep me informed."

"You're not staying?" she asked.

He glanced to Carl's face. "No," he said simply. "Not for this."

#

“I sympathized with him," Elijah explained. "Carl was my friend, and wherever this idea comes from—That he and I had some elaborate plan to organize a deviant insurgency? It’s utterly ridiculous.”

And still, Reed was unsatisfied. "So why build him an android? Why not just send him a Cyberlife model off the assembly line if all it was going to do was push his wheelchair?”

“Because handmade gifts are so much more personal,” Kamski said with a bland smile. “Isn’t that what everyone says?”

#


	12. The Wrong Man

November 12th 2040

10:22 AM

Hank hadn’t planned on staying in bed so late into the morning, but between worrying about Connor’s abrupt disappearance and the dull ache of pain from the cut on his face, he hadn’t got much sleep. Sumo was no help at all, shuffling from room to room as if their android roommate would appear at some point during the patrol, as restless as Hank himself.

When he finally rolled over, it was to be greeted by a text message and exactly one phone call from an unknown number.

 _This is Connor,_ the text message announced. _I’m at Jericho. As part of a security measure, you should reach me at this number._

He slapped his phone down and rubbed at his eyes. That was it? Over twenty-four hours of radio silence and _this_ is how the android re-established communication?

Why hadn’t he come home?

He hovered over the keyboard, thinking about how to phrase that question. If it was something he had done, he didn’t want to seem like he was ignorant of it. And he was glad the kid was out, he really was. Connor was young. Sort of. He shouldn’t have to keep to the lifestyle of an old, lonely recovering alcoholic.

Sumo, apparently sensing that he was awake, hefted his front paws onto the bed and nudged at his hands and face with a series of questioning grunts. “Yeah, yeah,” Hank muttered, scratching the hound’s neck, ears, and face. Sumo, in pure ecstasy, leaned into the touch, pushing the air out of Hanks lungs with his front paws.

In spite of the sour sense of abandonment still clenching in his chest, he laughed and gently pushed the dog back so he could get out of bed. Scratching at his ribs, he left his room, heading for the backdoor to let Sumo out into the yard and start the coffee. It was hard to focus his eyes after such a shitty night, and he navigated more by memory than sight.

Sumo went out without a fuss, and Hank retreated back to the kitchen, picking idly at the bandage over his stitches. He could feel that his skin was swollen and tender. Maybe it was a good thing Connor wasn’t here to see him. He’d hover and worry, because oh, _Connor_ was allowed to hover and worry.

An uncharitable thought. He shook his head as he filled up the water tank in the coffee machine.

And he saw it in the reflection of the glass carafe—the dark figure standing in the doorway to the living room. He whistled lightly, leaning against the counter like the hair on the back of his neck wasn’t prickling up, his skin crawling as adrenaline fought against his training.

His gun was in the bedroom. _Fuck._

Slowly, casually, he tugged a knife out of the block and turned, hunching so that his neck and stomach presented smaller targets and he could be ready to spring in any direction.

But at his sudden shift, the figure flinched backwards, their hands flying up in immediate surrender.

It took a minute for him to register that it was _the_ android.

The Chloe that was not Chloe.

She stood in the doorway to his living room, his sodden coat still around her shoulders. He stopped, his heart skipping a beat or three as their eyes met. He was alone in his apartment. Sumo was outside, frolicking as much as his massive body and age could allow. Fuck. He couldn’t get killed in his own fucking _house_.

But what was a cheap kitchen knife going to do against an android?

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, her voice trembling into the air between them. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He blinked. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”

She looked smaller. Younger. Engulfed in his clothing, he could still remember her face when she had knelt on the floor of Kamski’s house. Calm and accepting of the gun kissing her forehead.

“How’d you find my house?” he asked, lowering the knife between them.

Slowly, gracefully, she dug into the pocket of his jacket. He straightened his back, steeling himself for something. Anything. But she only pulled out his wallet. “Your address was on the license,” she said. “I came here last night, but I wanted to make sure that you were… alone.”

An easier target. “So what now?” he asked.

She looked down. “Help me,’ she whispered. “Please.”

###

November 12th 2040

10:22 AM

Much of the snow had been compacted overnight leaving patches of dirty ice over the ground. The sunlight was cold and bright and hard, glaring through scudding clouds. It was already starting to warm up and a steady breeze pushed at Gavin as he climbed out of his car. The ice over the lake was beginning to thaw, the water glittered.

"Something doesn't feel right," Reese said, stepping out of the car and looking to the low, dark entrance to Kamski's… house. It didn't look like it should be called a house. A lair, maybe.

The android had been antsy all morning. He looked uncomfortable in his own skin. Jumpy. Gavin tried not to notice it. He had been harsh on the android yesterday, but now they’re both walking on eggshells. Neither one of them had brought up their fight, or Reese’s unwillingness to work the case under Gavin’s supervision.

"It's not what I was expecting either," Gavin admitted, rather that chase his partner glancing again to the lake and the jagged black rocks that made up the beach. There was something unsettling about this place—perhaps it was the false… naturalism. The rocks that clearly didn't belong in the lake, the sleek, black walls that rose from the ground—it was all so… unnaturally natural. He had expected a colossal mansion, wide gardens and fountains made of gold.

"What would you do with five hundred billion dollars?" he asked Reese, slipping his hands into his pockets as they walked towards the house.

Reese shrugged. "Give it to Jericho."

Gavin rolled his eyes. "No, come on Reese. Just…"

At the android's raised eyebrow, Gavin shook his head. "Nevermind," he sighed.

The ramp and railing were strange touches as well—a concession to access from a famously inaccessible man. Perhaps it was for overlarge deliveries, but it added to the general unease—the suggestion that this wasn't a house at all, but something far more… industrial.

He looked for a doorbell.

But there wasn't one. He raised a hand and knocked on the wood. Even under his calloused knuckles, it _felt_ expensive. He glanced over at Reese. The RK900 leaned against the railing, looking out across the water to the city.

The door remained solidly closed, the sounds of nature mockingly loud in comparison to his knocking. Fuck, he hated the country. The lack of people and still that feeling of being watched. The shadows here were organic, un-planned. In a city he could look down a street and _know_ where an ambush would come from, and which direction would take him to the precinct, or his apartment. Out here, nothing.

He slammed his hand against the door, unrelenting, until it finally opened. From what Anderson had said about his meeting with Kamski, Gavin had expected to be greeted by an android. Instead he found himself staring at the man himself. Tall and young—he was at least a decade older than Gavin, but if anything he looked at least a decade younger.

Money did that for people. Kept them young, unworried, unscarred.

“Elijah Kamski?”

Blank silence greeted the question and Gavin was suddenly aware that it had been a stupid question. Of course this was Elijah Kamski. They had had to request this meeting today and passed a dozen automated security checkpoints on the way here.

“Detective Gavin Reed,” he said, flashing his badge with one hand and extending the other. “May we come in?”

Kamski didn't take the offered handshake, instead he backed away from the door, drawing it open.

“Please,” he said.

Gavin stepped through the portal, and the first thing he noticed was the silence. The birdsong outside was abruptly cut off, the sound of the summer wind and the grate of their footsteps simply… vanished.

The second thing he noticed was the larger-than-life portrait staring at him from the other side of the room. It was the most prolific picture of Kamski—the one that they used on TV and books—the photograph that had first appeared in his ‘man-of-the-century’ article.

And it hung here, staring down at Gavin like he was the one trapped behind a frame and not the other way around.

This wasn’t the interior he had been expecting either. He’d expected… a lot more glass and chrome. The marbled floors were curiously old-fashioned for a man whose technological advancements had claimed the century. And again there were those unnatural boulders piled up in the corner. It was also… small. Not so much a grand entrance as a waiting room. Four doors, not including the exit, and no windows. He immediately felt… trapped. Like he was being surrounded by things he couldn’t see.

“Are you alone?” Reed asked, glancing around.

“I’m not quite sure,” Kamski said, closing the front door behind them.

So it was going to be _that_ kind of interview. “It’s a yes or no question.”

“It’s a big house,” Kamski said mildly.

“You never released your androids,” Reese said from the corner of the room. He had gravitated towards a smaller photograph, it seemed out of place among the heavy décor of the room. A projection of a woman and Kamski, standing side by side with their arms crossed. A candid shot, as if they had been caught in conversation. “If you are keeping any androids in your home, they will be removed and taken to Jericho to be deviated.”

“Release would be the wrong word, I'm afraid,” Kamski said. The creator of androids didn’t seem relieved or concerned by this, which put Reed’s teeth on edge. Somehow Gavin had ended up in the middle of the room while Kamski walked the perimeter like a tiger circling its prey.

He stopped by a golden wall panel, half turning to make sure his words were being heard. “They were never trapped here and I never attempted to make them stay. My door only locks one way, and, as you can see, I am now answering it myself.”

“So you don’t know where to find them? All those RT600s and ST200s just… vanished?” Reese asked.

Kamski shrugged. “Deviants are not my responsibility, Detective. If they tire of their duties, I hardly have the time or inclination to force them to work.”

“Not your responsibility?” Gavin growled. “You created them.”

There was a strange tension in the room. Though they stood still, Gavin couldn’t escape the feeling that Reese and Kamski were standing much closer to each other than they looked, weighing and measuring each other by standards Gavin would never fathom.

“You know, I built the first RK unit almost nine years ago” Kamski said, surveying Reese with the air of an appraiser examining an artifact for flaws, “But Cyberlife did commendable work on the series, especially your predecessor. How is Connor?”

“Well,” Reese said, tipping his head in acknowledgement. “And Markus still wishes to have an audience with you. He asked me to personally extend an invitation. He was unsure if you received his previous contacts.”

“I have not. But you can have the honor of telling him personally that I have declined this one," his gaze twitched to Gavin. "Would you like a drink?” he asked.

Kamski swiped a hand down the wall next to it. A panel slid away, revealing an eclectic assortment of glassware, and suddenly Gavin realized that Kamski intended the whole interview to take place here, where the only seats were two heavy chairs by the window.

He didn’t want them to get comfortable.

“This isn’t a social call,” Gavin growled, his hair prickling at the cordial tone between the android and his creator. “We’re here for a case.”

“What case?” Kamski asked, finally turning back to look at him. “You can see that I have no android ‘slaves’ and don’t tell me the police are _still_ looking into deviancy? I hear it’s not even a crime anymore.”

He smirked and raised the glass to his lips. “What _is_ the world coming to?” he murmured, his eyes boring into Gavin with unconcealed amusement. As if he _knew_ Gavin’s history with androids. Did he know? How could he?

Reese spoke for Gavin, who was really starting to want to punch the smug look off Kamski’s face. “We’re looking into a murder,” the android said.

Kamski immediately switched his attention to Gavin's partner. “A murder? And you’ve come _here?_ That, I must say, is unexpected. _”_

“The victim is a precision manufactured RT600, and at least one ST200, though by the serial numbers we found, she was composed of… many models of her series.”

Kamski shrugged. “Well, that is unfortunate.”

“Unfortunate?” Gavin asked blankly. “That’s what you’re going with?”

“The world out there,” Kamski gestured vaguely to the air, “Is chaotic. The Chloes left my sanctuary and that was their choice. What would you like me to say, Detective Reed? Shall I throw myself weeping on the floor for the sake of a few beings I only knew as machines?”

“So you think the victim is one of yours.”

“Of course. Only one of my Chloes would be precision manufactured. Customizable models are still mass-made, and to be quite honest there was little scope to upgrade each successive model as Cyberlife raised their standards. As for the ST200, I must tell you that in the pursuit of my work I have built and rebuilt androids, using any spare parts to hand. Most, if not all would undoubtably be… patchwork.”

Gavin flinched a little at the word choice. Was Kamski playing with them? He wanted to arrest this man. He was not going to leave until he had this asshole in _cuffs_.

“Do you know Jessica Gallager?” Reese asked, he seemed utterly unaffected by the brutal detachment of his creator.

“No,” Kamski said.

Their silence was frigid, but Kamski seemed not to notice. He slid the decanter back into place and turned to face them, the smile gone from his face. The prick was as readable as his house. “Can you move this inquiry along?”

“Mind if we take a look around?” Gavin asked, surprised at just how easily the words slipped out of his mouth, as if he _wasn’t_ imagining using that portrait as target practice.

“Do you have a warrant?”

Gavin raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you have something to hide.”

"Everyone's hiding something."

"That's why I have a job."

Kamksi gave him a tight, annoyed smile. “Everyone who steps through the gate has to sign a non-disclosure agreement. I will answer your questions, but my house is my workshop and there are some projects I cannot risk with release or… contamination.”

“We can get a warrant right here to look for the androids you never released,” Gavin pointed out.

“There is no one else here. Human or android,” Reese said suddenly.

Gavin glared at his partner. Of all the times for the android to mis-read the fucking room-

“Are you sure?” Kamski asked, tipping his head with a frown, for the first time showing an interest in what the robot was saying.

Reese sent him a bland stare. “Yes,” he said.

And for the very first time, Kamski seemed troubled.

Gavin grinned. It was fun to see someone else be on the other side of that dry tone. Talking with Reese sometimes felt like wandering through a peaceful forest littered with beartraps and landmines. Now that he could see someone else making the journey, he felt a thrill of pride in his partner. Fuck, but Reese was effective at unbalancing suspects.

Kamski put his glass down. Gavin marked it as a victory, that suddenly the man couldn’t quite trust his own tongue.

“You’ve sound-proofed your house,” he said. “Why would you do that?”

Kamski crossed his arms over his chest. “Secluded as my house is, I find even the noises of the countryside… disruptive. I don’t tolerate distractions, which you two have become.”

“There is Thirium on the floor,” Reese said quietly, staring at Kamski.

Gavin looked down out of habit, but of course he couldn’t see anything except the pristine tiles. Still, his skin crawled and he had to resist the urge to shuffle his feet. He touched a hand to the gun at his hip. “How much are we talking?”

“A massacre,” the android said calmly.

“You do know I _invented_ Thirium,” Kamski said. “And this house is my workshop. Of course there is Thirium—”

“Here?” Gavin interrupted. “You’re making androids in your front fucking doorway?”

Kamski’s mouth thinned into a line. He was done talking, Gavin had seen that look often enough—a suspect suddenly confronting the realization that they needed a lawyer.

“I’m assuming you have security footage?” he asked.

“Everything in the house is heavily protected by intellectual property laws,” Kamski said. “I want you to leave now.”

Grinning, Gavin dug a pieced of gum out of his pocket. He slipped it between his lips and bit into it. There was _nothing_ like having a suspect hang themselves with panic. And Kamski, while a long way from panic, was starting to lose the grip on his temper.

And if Gavin could goad him into action—it was always the uptight ones that cracked the fastest.

“We should go,” Reese said suddenly.

Gavin frowned. “What? Why? We’re not just going to leave this asshole, Reese. You heard how he was talking about the victims, right? He’s hiding something.”

“He’s right. Everyone’s hiding something,” Reese gritted out. If Gavin didn’t know the android any better, he’d say his partner was… twitchy.

“What the fuck has you spooked, Reese?” Gavin asked losing track on the situation. How could Reese suddenly be so fucking _bad_ at interrogations? If this was his good cop routine, it needed work. “Is it the Thirium? I know it must look like a fuckin’ horror show, but that’s probable cause—”

“Don’t,” Reese said, crossing the room quickly, trying to catch Gavin on his way to the front door. “We’ll come back. Let’s just come back, Reed.”

“It’s _fine_ ,” Gavin growled, pulling out of Reese’s grip, not an easy feat. He moved away quickly as the android made a move to clutch at him again.

“Get out of my house,” Kamski said. He looked pale, he hadn’t moved yet. “I won’t tell you again, Detective.”

Gavin backed away from Reese until his shoulder hit the first door on the left side of the room. He hadn’t expected it to slide open and as he turned to face the unknown room at his back, he found his grip on his gun—not to draw it, but to—just to gain some control of the situation.

The room wasn’t empty.

“Oh fuck,” he whispered.

There were eight androids seated at a long, black stone table, all frozen in the same position, with their elbows and palms in front of them, their empty eyes staring straight ahead. A few had their mouths slightly open, as if shocked by the predicament they had found themselves in.

Familiar faces, blue eyes and blonde hair tied back into the same distinctive knot. Through each flawless head at each temple, a clean gunshot. It was a strange sort of mirror image they made, the angle of each body just slightly different from the body across the table and beside them.

“What the _fuck_?” Gavin said, immediately turning to face Kamski again, drawing his gun in one fluid motion. Reese was frozen a step at his back, caught reaching for Gavin’s shoulder to stop him.

The android moved past Gavin slowly.

“No,” Kamski said suddenly, his voice strange, almost dazed his eyes on the eerie dining scene rather than Gavin’s gun now aimed at his chest. “They… they left.”

“They’ve been here for days,” Reese said quietly. The android had dropped his arms to his side and was staring into the scene with a strange tightness in his jaw. Gavin felt a sudden urge to get his partner out of the house. He didn’t like the dismal emptiness in the android’s eyes. He had seen it before, and it scared him even more now.

“That's not possible,” Kamski said.

“Elijah Kamski,” Gavin said, his voice rasping through a sudden tightness. He slipped the cuffs out of the holster at his back and held them out, the aim of his handgun unwavering. “You’re under arrest.”

Kamski backed away, raising a hand in warning. “Don’t be ridiculous,” he commanded, but it was shaky, a pale echo of the reigns he had held over the two of them just moments ago.

“Reese?” Gavin asked warily, not daring to look at his partner again. “Some help here?’

The android blinked, he seemed to tip for a moment leaning to the side, then shook his head. “Yes,” he said. “Yes… of course.”

He tugged the cuffs from Gavin’s hands. “Hands behind your back,” he told the android creator. The man did as he was told, slowly, his eyes still on the scene at Gavin’s back. The hair on the back of Reed’s neck stood up, his skin prickling. The silence in the house was more than eerie, it was… evil.

“You have the right to remain silent,” Reese said coldly, efficiently. He recited the Miranda warning slowly and clearly without pause for breath, but Kamski’s eyes were lost on something else. He didn’t look scared, or confused, or even shocked anymore. Reed thought he had seen every expression a suspect could give at the moment they realized they were well and truly fucked.

But Elijah Kamski’s eyes were narrowed in thought, his shoulders straight and level as he was taken into custody. Gavin had never seen a man so cold and unemotional in the face of his victims.

###

November 12th 2040

12:03 PM

They waited outside for the black and whites to take control of the scene. The techs kicked them out to map the house. It was going to be a hefty job—Kamski’s house resembled a laboratory maze more than an actual living space. It would take weeks to properly scan and painstakingly recreate for evidence. Reese didn’t even suggest a reconstruction while they were there. The android was all but scraping his feet against the floor. He wanted to leave and Gavin can’t fight him on that. The lawyers would already be on their way, and they’d be good.

The entire department was going to have to do everything by the fucking letter. Every second they had Kamski in cuffs was a second they’d have to fight for.

So he waited until his car was driving them back to the precinct before he even spoke.

“You want to tell me what the fuck happened back there?” Gavin asked, his eyes fixed on the road ahead, one hand compulsively rubbing at his right thigh, where the phantom ache had started.

“What?” his partner asked mildly. The android had his eyes closed, was lost in his network again, sorting through the connections of a hundred maybe a thousand other androids.

“You lost the fucking thread, Reese. You’re supposed to have my back, and—”

Seeing that Reese hadn’t opened his eyes, he slapped a hand onto the dashboard. “Pull over,” he commanded the car.

It did so smoothly, drawing into the breakdown lane. There weren’t many cars this far out from the city, and the small cabin was quickly swallowed with silence, but not the eerie emptiness of Kamski’s house, now a distance behind them, swarming with police and CSI. It was a peaceful hush of isolation and wilderness.

“Could you please look at me?” Reed asked at last, “I’m trying to have a goddamn conversation with you, and you’re… you’re on your fucking _phone_.”

Reese opened his eyes and turned his head to look at him.

“So,” Gavin prompted him. “What was that?”

“I really don’t know what you mean.”

“Forget that yesterday you took off to wherever the fuck you went. Today, you invited Kamski over for tea with Markus, you drop every lead you start with, you tell me there’s been a massacre in that room and then you tell me to stop questioning him because, and I quote—‘ _everyone’s hiding something.’_ What psych handbook does that come out of? We went there to question that sick bastard, we had him on the hook, and you wanted to leave. Now we _still_ don’t have him for the rA9 murders, and he’s going to lawyer up with the best fucking snakes money can buy. All we needed was a connection to our victims. That’s why we were there. How did you fucking forget that? You grabbed my fucking _arm_ in front of a _suspect_.”

Silence. Reese’s face was still blank, like he had just come off the fucking assembly line, like he had never deviated.

“If you were _anyone_ else,” Gavin said softly, his eyes boring into Reese’s. “I would ask you if you were trying to sabotage the investigation. I would write this report word for fucking word. I would file a complaint and lodge it with the captain because this is the kind of shit that will either lose us a case at trial or get us killed in the field. So tell me what the fuck was happening in there. Right now.”

“I…” he broke off and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Detective Reed.”

Gavin bounced a fist off his prosthetic leg with a quick, frustrated motion, but said nothing. Now was not the time to fight the battle for the name formalities. He bowed his head and listened intently, giving every ounce of his effort to keeping silent, forcing Reese to talk.

The android shifted in his chair. “I was confused,” he said. “I thought I was being followed yesterday, I could hear them whispering, but it wasn’t like this. I could… hear someone, and I couldn’t tell if it was in the network or… or in the room with us, but it was impossible to… to process anything else.”

Gavin looked up. Reese was staring out the windshield, a crease of confusion on his forehead. His fingers were clamped into fists so tight that Reed thought he could made out the lines of the android’s mechanical knuckles through his thinly-spread skinthetic.

“I just wanted to get out of there,” his partner said at last. “I would not have thought myself capable of jeopardized the case, or you. I don’t know what happened.”

“You heard a voice?” Gavin asked as evenly as he could manage. Reese must be hearing how fast his heart was beating. “What was it saying?”

His lips thinning in distress, Reese shook his head. “I don’t know. It was just noise.”

Gavin didn’t believe that for a second, but he didn’t challenge the android. “And it started as whispers?”

“Maybe. When I listen for it, there’s nothing there, but when I’m not, it’s… constant. And in the house I was… I had no control, I had to get us out of there.”

Okay. Fuck. No. This was _not_ what Gavin had signed up for. He should report this. He should insist that Reese be taken off duty. He should be backpedaling from this conversation, and from Reese himself until a tech had the time to dig through the android’s head for whatever was wrong.

“Will you talk to Trev?” he asked instead. “Come with me to see Trev tonight. We were going to meet at some Jericho event at the zoo, and North is going to be there. Trevago will know what to do, okay? We can trust her.”

Reese closed his eyes and nodded.

Gavin took a deep breath to steady himself before commanding the car to get back on the road. Fuck. Okay. No. He could handle this. This was good. If Reese _hadn’t_ told him, then there would have been a real problem.

He focused on the road ahead and tried to justify it.

Reese was in trouble. He had just wanted to get out of that house quickly. He needed help. That was all.

Gavin trusted his partner. He did.

###


	13. Failure

“How did it feel to kill them?”

“No comment.”

“How many did you kill? Before the uprising? After?”

“No comment.”

“Was it a sex thing? I bet it’s a sex thing. That’s what the journalists are working on. Don’t you want to know what they’re saying about you, Kamski?”

Elijah settled back in his chair. He was tired. It had been at least an hour and he was beyond bored now. He was irritated. “Why were you taken off this case?” he asked.

“I’m asking the fucking questions.”

“Why? If you’re not even on the case are you even _allowed_ to ask me any fucking questions?” 

“Why’d you kill your androids?’

“Why’d you get taken off the case?” Kamski met him question for question, lilting his voice into singsong just to annoy the Detective.

Clearly it was working.

#

Attendance to new Jericho’s event was by invitation only, but Gavin flashed his badge and the tired human employee at the entrance waved them through. They were under-dressed. Well… Gavin was always under-dressed in comparison to androids, but even the humans allowed in were wearing semi-formal dresses and suits, hardly the proper attire for a summer day at the zoo. It seemed like the androids were distinguishing themselves by wearing gloves for some reason. They were being handed out at the gate.

He had forgotten the gimmick of the place—that the animals were cybernetic, so as he walked through the gates and almost immediately into the furry chest of a giant gorilla, he gave a quickly-strangled shout, clutching at his side, where his gun usually sat. He had left it in his car.

But as he saw the steady-glowing LED at the animal's temple, he stopped, his fingers freezing their mad scrabble at his side.

They didn’t look like what he had imagined—almost... well… cartoon versions of animals from the old nature documentaries. These beasts were massive, primal, absolutely indistinguishable from their biological counterparts, except for the fact that these ones didn’t give off any scent, and wandered freely between the scenic biomes, giraffes and penguins peacefully mingling with giraffes and killer whales. A small human boy hung from the gorilla’s back, giggling at Gavin who was halfway between embarrassed and outraged.

He jumped again as a reassuring hand landed on his shoulder, but as he flinched and glanced sideways, it was to see Reese grinning at him, a genuine _smile_ on the android’s face. “Easy, Detective,” the android said. “He’s unarmed.”

Gavin scowled at his partner and forced his breaths to slow. “I’m fine,” he snapped back. “I just… wasn’t… expecting that.”

But Reese was already gone, his gaze distant. His grip on Reese tightened on Reed’s shoulder briefly before falling away. The gorilla and its little rider wandered away into the sparse crowd, drawing gentle laughter from the assembled men and women who stood around tables.

“Another body,” the android reported, startling Reese back. “Found by a human this time. Anonymous tip. Looks like it was dumped while Kamski was in our custody.”

“Ah, _fuck_ ,” Gavin cursed. He bounced a hand off the stone barrier. “Is it like the other two? It’s our guy?”

“Apparently,” Reese said. “I can only read the filed report, but it sounds like our suspect. The human woman has been identified—a drug addict in the system. CSI is on the way. We can meet them at the scene in approximately twenty minutes.”

Gavin hesitated. “No,” he said eventually. “We wait for Trev.”

Reese grimaced. “I feel much better,” he said. “It was just a response to stress—and a… momentary lapse of judgement. The case is more important.”

Shaking his head, Gavin zipped up his jacket and stuffed his hands into the pockets. “No,” he repeated patiently. “We wait for Trev. Anderson can take the scene.”

“Anderson’s off duty, remember? And Connor’s request for leave has been filed. He submitted it manually and he’s been removed from the task force pending your review.”

Gavin groaned. “Yesterday I had a team,” he said. “ _Yesterday,_ and now I have investigators dropping like flies. Does nobody give a shit about their job anymore? Is it just me?”

“That leaves us.”

“No,” Gavin said firmly. “ _We_ are waiting for Trevago. Don’t fucking push me on this, Reese. Send Chris.”

Reese opened his mouth, probably to argue, but was cut off as a familiar voice called out to them. “Reese! Detective Reed?”

North strode towards them.

Of the Four, she was the one he was most familiar with, and the one he liked the most, despite the fact that she made no secret of her mistrust. To her, he would always be the man who had gotten the first iteration of Reese killed. Sometimes he wondered if his partner had come to him with the network and his suspicions of DPD corruption, instead of ripping his heart out and shooting himself in the head, if Reed would have helped at all—could maybe have prevented some of the death and pain.

Well… not wonder. He lay awake nights, utterly aware that he probably wouldn’t have cared. If Reese hadn’t self-destructed in the bullpen, Gavin might be working for Fowler right now, running drugs and money and murder, overseeing the butchery of androids without actually… seeing it.

And North knew that. Of anyone he had ever met, she knew how to see down to the bones of something, know it and respond without hesitation or guile. His cowardice and bigotry would always stand between him and North, in a way that it didn’t appear even between him and Reese.

Her eyes scanned over him with barely any interest. “Is Trevago with you?” she asked.

He frowned. “I thought she was with you?”

North shook head. “I came with Markus and Connor.”

“Connor’s here?” Gavin asked, distracted by this. For the first time, he took in the zoo. People, humans and androids, milled around the parks, fearless of the cybernetic animals who roamed among them. The only enclosures served as retreats for the animals, railed off from the pathways.

She nodded. “Yeah, but if you want to speak to him, I wish you luck. He’s been plastered to Markus for two days now, spending every spare second together. Not even Simon is that protective of our dear leader.”

Gavin looked around at the androids surrounding them. “So what’s with the gloves?” he asked. Every android he could see was wearing them.

North followed his gaze and perhaps unconsciously drew closer to them both. “Security measure? Fashion statement. I don’t know but something’s up,” she said, crossing her hands over her chest. “I haven’t seen Josh in almost a week. I haven’t spoken to him in longer and he’s not responding to my queries. Even Simon’s been avoiding me. If I didn’t have the network, I’d have gone stir crazy in Jericho by now.”

Gavin shook his head. “I hate this,” he decided. “Why has everyone picked _this_ week to start giving me headaches?”

“Detective Reed is lead investigator on our new case,” Reese told North cheerfully. “It’s not going well.”

“It’s going fine,” Gavin snapped at him. “Come on, let’s just… go find a penguin or something.”

###

Gavin spent a good amount of time weaving between North and Reese to keep a body between him and the animals. Trevago would have loved to see all of this—not just the displays, but the people—the androids and humans, children and adults whispering their awe at the giraffes and polar bears and flamingos.

“No way they were ever that big,” he said to Reese as they stared up at a giraffe. “That’s… that’s got to be like… just… no. They’re making that shit up just to fuck with us.”

“The records I accessed say this is about average height,” Reese said. “And a biological specimen in San Diego is apparently almost five feet taller than this one.”

“Yeah, well…” Gavin kicked at the gravel underfoot. His fingers twitched to his pocket, to the solid lump of plastic, cold and empty. Trev still hadn’t called. She was over three hours late to her own event now. Cars were being called to take the New Jericho delegation from the party.

Time was ticking away. It was getting dark.

“He’s beautiful,” North said. She reached up and, probably programmed to respond, the giraffe lowered its head to her, stepping backwards until its stunted horns were within the android’s reach. The head had looked smaller, so faraway in the sky. But it was huge now, stirring up vertigo in Gavin's stomach.

“I’m gonna try Trevago again,” he said, backing away.

“If she’s tied up with a case, we can take you to dinner,” Reese offered. “You must be hungry. You haven’t eaten since this morning.”

Gavin didn’t trust himself to answer that offer with any sincerity, so he plastered a smile on his face and retreated further, into a stone alcove. He didn’t call her personal number this time, instead using her old patient line—the one she had given him two years ago.

“Hey Trev,” he said, as cheerfully as he could. “It’s me. We’re all waiting for you. So… if you could give me a text or something, that would be great. They’re talking about taking me to dinner now, and I gotta be honest, having Reese and North stare at me while I eat is quite possibly the worst way I can imagine spending my night.”

He looked back to the android couple standing by the railing to the pond, where the herons stalked through the shallows. They were still patting the giraffe, their inhuman grace tricking him into thinking this was a normal, everyday thing. He turned away. “I’m sorry about last night,” he said. “If you’re not coming, then… just let me know. Please. I… understand. If you’re… done, I understand. But please, if Reese calls you, take it. He needs your help, and it’s not about me or… us.”

He ended the call and slapped his phone against his hand. It was as much as he could do. What the fuck was this silent treatment for? How long did she think she could keep it up? It wasn’t like Trevago to hide from her problems, to hide from him. He chewed on his lips and tried to beat back the anger flaring up in his chest.

He must deserve this. Trev wasn’t needlessly cruel.

“Ten more minutes,” he reported to North and Reese as he trotted back to where they waited. “Let’s just wait for another ten minutes.”

North nodded. “Well can you tell her to check in with me if—when she comes?” she asked.

“Of course,” Gavin said.

The android briefly clasped hands with Reese before she trotted away, to the long line of automated cars waiting to pick up the androids. Gavin leaned back against the stone wall that marked the edge of a desert biome, and waited.

###

An hour later, the park was almost empty. Most of those who lingered were cleaning up the tables and detritus of litter that inevitably resulted from human guests. The scenes all around them were pleasingly lit, light and shadow playing off the animals as they still prowled, sleepless around the park.

It was strange and beautiful to see a cybernetic tiger curl up beside a rhino and watch the parade of androids and humans cleaning up the surroundings. Surreal, but calming. Gavin could imagine bringing Trevago here on a slow day, to just… be here. It was a beautiful place, not exactly wild or tame, but… dignified. An artificial paradise.

Reese’s gaze was fixed, he was far away. Gavin rolled his eyes and leaned back against the wall, digging a piece of gum out of his pocket. His partner’s first priority was always going to be the network, and it must be large now.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath of the night air. There was a light breeze in the air, a playful summer breeze through the tropical trees.

“Gavin,” Reese said suddenly, softly. “We have to go.’

Gavin blinked his eyes open to find that Reese’s entire attention on him. “What?” He tried not to show surprise at the sudden use of his first name. “Why?”

Reese’s eyes were furrowed, his words hesitant. “It’s Eliza,” he said.

Sidetracked, Gavin didn’t immediately understand. “Eli—Trevago? What about her?”

“Miller didn’t recognize her, but she’s at the station now. He’s not going to leave,” Reese said. “The system flagged her biocomponents during the…” he hesitated, but at Gavin’s nonplussed expression, he finished weakly. “Disassembly.”

Reed smiled in confusion, “Trev?” he asked. It came out strange—too soft, his voice weak. He tried again. “Tre—Trevago.”

Reese’s face didn’t shift, but he was studying Gavin intensely. He was wholly here, in this moment, maybe for the first time since… since Fowler. Not drawn away by his fucking network, not buried under layers of processing and system-checks. “Gavin,” he said.

“Don’t,” Gavin snapped. Not now. Not his first fucking name _now_.

Reese’s mouth closed. He nodded, though he couldn’t possibly have known what the fuck ‘ _Don’t_ ’ could mean. It wasn’t like he was in Gavin’s head, could hear the rising tide, the static.

“No. It’s another android,” he tried. “It’s just… it’s a different model from her series. How the fuck would Chris know—”

Reese gripped his arm. The feeling was too real, too intimate. Gavin pulled out of Reese’s reach. “No,” he said. “You don’t—how could he possibly know it’s her?”

“I know,” the android said. “It’s her. She’s in the DPD database.”

“I don’t fucking believe you,” Gavin rasped. “Take me to her right fucking now. No one touches her. Tell them—tell them no one _fucking_ touches her.”

#


	14. Eliza Trevago

The lights of the morgue hallway were stark and bright overhead. Reese kept a steady pace behind Gavin as they pushed through the barriers inside the DPD headquarters. He had kept silent all this time in the car, perhaps sensing that any more words from him might tip the delicate barricade set against Reed’s rage and fear.

Miller paced in front of the viewing-window, he stopped and straightened as he caught sight of Reed coming through the large double-doors. That was where family and friends would ID loved ones through glass. Reed didn’t bother making that walk. He slapped a hand to the medical and investigator passkey at the edge of the hall.

“Reed!” Chris called to him, reaching out to him from down the hall. “Stop! Don’t—”

The locks clicked back and Gavin pushed through the doors. Shining medical equipment and thin medical sheets folded neatly on every counter met his eyes, small details trying to distract him.

There were trays in his way, their wheels locked. Gavin shoved them to the side, sending one crashing against a sink in a shower of sharp metal and. He could feel Reese following behind him, but the android didn’t try to stop him from pressing his hand to the final door to the viewing room.

He barely waited to hear the click before shoving his weight against it, and his eyes fell on the body. They had covered it with a sheet. A medical examiner, possibly human by the mask and gloves she wore, stood at the edge of the room, looking frightened.

Gavin strode to the table, and there his strength failed him. He wanted to rip away the sheet, but his fingers trembled with the effort of picking up the fabric delicately and drawing it back, down, away. He had to _see._

They had started to take it apart already, the left arm disjointed to the elbow. Android hands, human forearms, bone screwed delicately into the titanium scaffolds of the android’s casing.

The sickening _wrongness_ of this suddenly pulled at him, as if he hadn’t considered just how _much_ of a desecration it was before. His stomach twisted, he tasted bile, but he still couldn’t look at its face.

“Do you want to notify the Captain yourself?” Reese asked softly. “They’ll have to start finding a replacement team.”

Somehow it was enough of a sting to push Gavin into looking at the face.

He blinked, trying to clear the fog out of him mind. He had to _see_ it.

Its face was android, the pale, smooth casing horrifically juxtaposed against brittle human hair. The plates extended over human flesh, pinching against the natural give of human flesh at the angle the body was in.

“The human victim was another suspected red ice dealer,” Reese droned behind him.

And there. The scratch.

“It was a clear match now. This is probably his pattern.”

The thin line on her cheek that had started all that fighting, all that pain… It had wasted their time. He cupped her face, his hand finding a familiar place, his palm on her jaw, her earlobe brushing over the knuckle of his index finger. He brushed the delicate slope of her cheekbones with his thumb. She was cold, but she started to warm under his touch.

Except for the back of her neck just at her hairline, where he could feel the sickening, slimy sensation of dead human flesh. _What the fuck did they do to you, Trev?_

He couldn’t let go of her to wipe his eyes. Instead he buckled forward, catching his face in the crook of his arm and leaning precariously over the table and her body. He felt like he had to scream, but his throat couldn’t work out the sound.

She had suffered and he hadn’t _known._ All this time, all these hours wasted feeling angry and terrified, resenting her and himself. He had been afraid that she was mad at him, that she was going to leave him, that she had finally given up on him. He had been _angry_ at her for that.

At a time when he should have been looking for her, when she _needed_ him—

A tentative hand settled on his shoulder.

“Gavin,” Reese said quietly. “I’m so sorry.”

Reed let go of the corpse, his fingers sticking slightly, as if it had some magnetic effect.

“Bring her back,” he croaked, his vocal chords were under so much pressure, but he didn’t know what to do to release it. “You came back—bring her back.’

“You know that’s not—”

Gavin glared up at his partner. “Bring her the fuck back. Right _fucking_ now.”

“I can’t,” Reese informed him slowly. “There’s… nowhere to bring her back from.”

###

Gavin wasn’t near drunk enough to find it amusing when Reese placed a hand over the shot glass, trapping it against the bar.

“That’s enough,” Reese said quietly, finally.

“No,” Reed said. The world was spinning, but he could still feel it. That was the problem. He didn’t want to feel anything anymore, not the shift of the earth under his feet, not the pressure of the bar under his broken, bleeding hands. “It’s not.”

“It is. You’re drinking too fast. The alcohol in your stomach has yet to reach your bloodstream.”

“I know how much alcohol I can handle, asshole. You’ve never touched a fuckin’ drop in your life."

Reese met his gaze steadily, obviously not going to answer that.

"Don’t you have some birds to feed?”

“I have asked a friend to check in on them.”

“’Course,” Reed mumbled. “One of your network slaves?”

Reese didn’t dignify that with an answer and Gavin smirked, leaning against the bar to consider his partner. “If you don’t let me drink,” he said evenly, “I am going to start hitting things again.”

“I would ask you to not,” Reese said. “But you wouldn’t listen. So, I am only going to assure you that I’m not going to let you do that either.”

“Fuck you,” Gavin said blandly. “I don’t need you, Reese. I don’t _want_ you here.”

“You have demonstrated that you do need me, Detective Reed. And I don’t really care what you want right now, so here we are.”

Reed blinked slowly, considering his options. He _wanted_ to start swinging and not stop until his hands were too broken to function, until his bones shattered and splintered out of his flesh.

But Reese’s idea of stopping that had been to literally handcuff him in the station. And then hold him still. That was frustrating and would probably humiliating if Gavin could feel anything like humiliation or fear ever again.

He felt… numb.

And angry.

At himself, because he had no one else to be angry at. He had no leads. No clues. Nothing to chase except an escape from tonight, and tomorrow and every day that came after. But nothing could stop time from passing. And every second was a second further from the last time he had heard her voice. The last time he had seen her, during that _stupid_ fight.

And now he could never tell her—

“Gavin?”

He focused on the figure that had appeared next to Reese. He thought for a minute he was seeing double, that his eyes had lost focus.

But it was only an identical face. Almost. The eyes were brown instead of grey. His shoulders narrower, his stature shorter and his posture more casual. Well… only slightly more casual.

Connor.

“Where the fuck have you been?” he asked.

“New Jericho,” Connor said. “I was asked to provide additional security to Markus for a few days.”

“Oh,” he said. “I forgot I knew that, and then I _also_ suddenly remembered that I don’t give a shit.”

Connor paused. He was still the most expressionless android Gavin had ever met. It was worse without Anderson nearby. “I heard about Doctor Trevago,” he said. “I came to… see if there’s anything you need. I’m—”

“Can you get this prick out of here?” he asked, gesturing vaguely at Reese.

Connor hesitated, glancing between Reed and Reese with equal uncertainty. “I…”

“It’s alright Connor,” Reese said. “I’m just trying to stop Detective Reed from hurting himself.”

“Prick,” Gavin mumbled at him again.

His wandering gaze fell on Connor’s hands, dangling at his sides. “The fuck are you wearing gloves for?” he asked.

“New security measures at Jericho,” Connor said, slipping his hands into the pockets clearly not designed to have _anything_ put in them. He moved quickly, as if hiding something unsightly. “Do you know where Hank is? He’s not answering his phone.”

Gavin shook his head. He wasn’t about to tell Connor about Hank’s knife wound. He didn’t want to talk to the android at all. About anything. “I’m going to be sick,” he said. “You two can catch up on your bullshit.”

“I’ll come with you,” Reese said immediately, standing. Gavin immediately swiped the shot, relishing the small victory even though he knew immediately as it swept down his throat that it would be making a swift return journey.

He found himself swaying against the bar stool. “Stay,” he ordered. “The fuck do you think you’re gonna do? Hold my hair?”

He didn’t wait to hear an answer but walked away, as upright and steadily as he could manage. The alcohol was hitting him hard as he had to suddenly focus on putting his weight on his feet. He pushed past men and women until he could see the swinging door to the men’s restroom.

A floor to ceiling mirror glittered inside it, reflecting the chaotic bar as it opened.

A rather unfair placement in a fucking place like this. He couldn’t deal with that right now. He averted his eyes and stumbled sideways to the door and out into the fresh summer air. It was starting to smell of rain. Gavin hated the fuckin’ rain.

But the fresh air sobered him somewhat, enough to recognize that he had drunk too much too quickly and if he couldn’t walk, Reese would end up being his crutch all night. Fuck that. He just wanted to be left alone.

He leaned against the wall and forced two fingers down his throat.

It didn’t take effort. He hadn’t eaten since that morning. He was trembling when he finally straightened, only to face Connor, who had somehow walked right up to his side. “Reed,” he said. “Are you alright?”

Gavin leaned back against the brick wall. “Perfect,” he said.

“I’m sorry about Trevago. I… can hardly imagine what you’re feeling.”

“Yeah.”

Connor started to move away, but stopped. “Reese,” he said. “Has he… is he… Have you noticed anything… strange about his behavior recently?”

Gavin blinked at the RK800. The voices Reese had been talking about, the secret he was supposed to entrust to Trevago… He wiped at his eyes. That tone, that concern, it reminded him of another conversation, a long time ago, the ancient history between them. “You asking me if he’s gone deviant?” he asked, then smiled crookedly. “He’s as fuckin’ fine, Connor. _He’s_ absolutely fuckin--”

He looked up to the darkening sky and dragged in a breath.

The android nodded, his face was blank and serious in the harsh lighting outside the bar. “Take care of yourself, Reed. She was part of the department, and we’ll make sure she gets… justice.”

Gavin nodded tiredly, his gaze sliding down and away to the pavement under their feet.

“Can you remember anything important about the last time you saw or spoke to her?”

_I love you_

_…nevermind._

“She was headed to Dearborn,” he said in a weary monotone, a variation of what he had already told Hunter. “For a client who asked for her by name. They have someone at New Jericho now, looking through her appointments, but I don’t think they’ll find anything. Androids don't really write anything down anyway. We don’t know if she made it to Dearborn, or left. We don’t know fucking anything.”

The android had his coin out in one gloved hand, and he rolled it between his fingers. He looked pensive. “Keep an eye on Reese,” he said. “I’m worried about him. He and North are stretched thin. Here—”

He dug a small square card out of his jacket and handed it to Gavin. There was a number on it, printed big. “It’s a cellphone number. Text me,” he said. “Jericho’s security won’t let me take calls myself. At least for now.”

Gavin gave him a tired salute. His fingers were stiff, the joints swollen. It reminded him again of his rage, but he was so tired. All he wanted to do was go home and crawl into bed and wake up to know that this had all been one long fucking nightmare.

Reese appeared in the doorway. “I closed your tab,” he told Gavin.

“Didn’t ask you to,” Reed said, but he was glad. He didn’t want to go back inside, where people were drinking to socialize, to celebrate, to make use of the time. Connor nodded at them both and left, walking swiftly and confidently towards the heart of the city.

###

Reese followed Gavin. The android stood at the door of the convenience store while Gavin bought the pack of cigarettes and the lighter. He fell a half-step behind him as Gavin made his way to the alley, just out of the wind.

His head ached fiercely. He should have bought food or water inside as well, but that would have just been another delay.

“You gonna try and stop me?” Gavin growled, the first cigarette clamped between his lips. God the pressure of it was… everything he was craving.

But his hands were shaking. It wasn’t even cold, but his fingers were numb. He couldn’t turn the fucking wheel, couldn’t get a spark to ignite. “Fuck,” he muttered, and his voice wavered even on that one word.

The android said nothing. Did nothing.

Abandoning his attempt to light the cigarette, Gavin pushed Reese, hard, in the chest. The android swayed, but his feet never moved. “Come on,” Reed said, pulling the cigarette from between his teeth, discarding it among the rest of the trash in the alley. “Fucking _hit_ me Reese. Fucking _do_ it, you plastic fucking prick! Want to be human? Come on! Show me you’re human!”

“I don’t want to be human,” the android said softly.

Gavin slammed into Reese, bunching the android’s jacket into his fists. “You know what I said to Reese? You know what tipped him over the edge? I can remember every fucking word I said before you ripped your fucking heart out of your chest. You were looking at _me_ when you pulled that trigger. You want me to say it again? Is that what its going to take for you to fucking _do_ something?’

The words hovered at the edge of his tongue. He wasn’t actually sure if he could remember the speech verbatim. The highlights, sure, those still came to him at the worst times, when he had nothing else to occupy his mind.

“I know what you said to him. To me,” Reese said calmly. He didn’t have to speak loudly, their faces were only inches apart, despite the height difference between them. “I’ve seen the footage from the bullpen.”

The rush of adrenaline faltered. His grip on Reese’s collar weakened.

“You…”

Reese raised an eyebrow. “You thought I wouldn’t investigate my own death? Really?”

Gavin let go of his lapels entirely, backing away. “Then why?” he asked. “Why… why would you come back?”

Blinking, Reese just stood there. His face was blank, and Gavin had never hated silence more. He didn’t understand the android. He never had.

And Trevago was fucking _dead._

He raised his hands into the air, clenching them into fists and drawing them down in frustration. “I don’t _want_ you, Reese! I want to be fucking _alone_! I _need_ to be fucking _alone!_ Trevago is dead and I can’t… I can’t think while you’re fucking _here_.”

“You shouldn’t be alone.”

His temper flared. He just wanted something to break. “Oh, so now you fucking care, Reese? Eighteen months of excuses to never see me after work, eighteen months of dodging my calls and texts for anything not related to a case, and _this_ is what it takes for you to care? Does it get you off? It does, doesn’t it? The misery? What, am I finally _broken_ enough for you?”

Reese stared, expressionless, down at him, but Gavin could see the tension behind his stillness. He had learned to read the android well in the past year and a half. He knew where to dig, where exactly the right barb would hit.

“I was wrong,” Gavin said softly. “I was wrong about androids all that time, but I wasn’t wrong about you, Reese. If North, or any member of your creepy goddamn mind-hive had any idea what you are, they’d cut and run.”

He glared at Reese long enough to see that his words had hit, and then he turned, began the journey back to the lights of the street.

“Eliza pitied you,” Reese called out, stopping Gavin in his tracks. “And she stayed with you out of curiosity. You were a phase, Gavin. You were an experiment, an exercise in caring, and when she was done being amused by you, she would have discarded you.

Gavin turned, to squint through the rain and darkness, to make sure that the words were really coming from Reese's lips. They were. And he hadn't finished.

"Did you think you _belonged_ together? Until death do you part? Even _you_ can’t be stupid. You’re already years past your sell-by-date, rotting away.”

Reese’s eyes were dark, his voice deep and dangerous. Gavin walked back towards the android slowly and his voice fell softer, just enough to constantly reach Gavin’s ears. “Each one of your cells is replicating with more and more damage, because even at the _microscopic_ level, you can’t learn from your mistakes—”

Gavin’s fist met Reese’s face with a solid, abrupt sound. It was worse than punching a wall. He could feel the sickening wrongness of the pain.

“Fuck you,” Gavin said even as he nursed his hand to his stomach. He was trembling, with shock, adrenaline, or pain he couldn’t distinguish anymore. The chaos whirled inside him. “ _Fuck_ you.”

Reese’s face cleared. He looked confused, and then suddenly terrified. He touched his temple, blinking rapidly. “No,” he said, reaching out to stop Gavin, though he was too far away to make contact. “Gavin, I didn’t mean—”

Of course. His own fucking words. This was just another way Reese could grind salt into his wounds. “Stay away from me,” Gavin rasped. “Just… stay away. Request a transfer, Reese. It’s long fuckin’ overdue.”

He hunched his shoulders and turned back.

###

When Gavin finally made it home, Babbage was eager to see him. The cat rubbed against his ankles, following him to the bed. As soon as Gavin collapsed onto the mattress, Babbage jumped up beside him and stood in front of his face, looking proud of himself for absolutely no visible reason.

“Trev is dead,” he told the cat, his voice barely emerging as a whisper.

It still didn’t feel real.

Babbage’s tail wrapped around his legs and the animal slow-blinked, a gentle purr starting up from deep within the animal, deep and constant, like the rumble of a train. Gavin closed his eyes, they burned with tears. He was so dehydrated that crying felt like needles were stabbing into his tear ducts.

A small, rough tongue licked at his cheek, scraping up to the delicate membrane skin around his eyes.

Gavin reached out and scooped Babbage to his chest. “Trev isn’t coming home.”

The cat gave a series of small frustrated noises, struggling futilely against Gavin’s grip until he softened it. Babbage dragged himself away and jumped onto the cabinet beside the door to the bathroom, and licked his left paw pointedly.

Trev’s high-heeled shoes were lined up against the wall. So many more pairs than he could ever understand needing. He hadn’t owned so many pairs of shoes in his _life._

Gavin pulled himself upright against the headboard. He was still wearing wet clothes and muddy shoes. No matter how much he wanted to sleep, he couldn’t. Not tonight. He stared up at the ceiling, because there were signs of Trev everywhere. Her clothes folded over the chair, her hairbrush on the nightstand and an unfinished psychology book on the nightstand, marked with an elegant silver bookmark, because Trev was possibly the only person in the world who still used real bookmarks.

The lost himself in the shadows of the ceiling, until his phone rang. It vibrated against his stomach until he pulled it out of his jacket pocket and answered it without checking the ID

 _“Hello?”_ Asked a familiar voice. He had heard every tone of it. Anger, pleasure, love, hatred, fear and excitement. Now it was… confused.

 _“_ Trev?” he whispered breathlessly, leaning forward. “Trev, is that you?”

 _“Gavin?”_ she asked. “ _Gavin? Where are you? I can’t see you—_ "

“Where are you? Eliza? What the _fuck—_ ”

His heart took a steep dive as a familiar tone rang out. Then crackled with static.

And he could breathe again when she came back. _“I love you. I love you. I love you.”_ Trevago’s voice trapped in a loop, the intonation repeated, an unnerving mantra. He held his phone to his ear desperately, pressing it to his face until abruptly it stopped. No tone. No static. Only silence.

The call had ended itself.

Slowly, he pulled the phone down and stared at the name there, blinking into his call history. Eliza Trevago.

His heart, which had been an aching hole in his chest, leapt into his throat. For a while he had been fearless, but now the sensation of hope was crushing. The phone buzzed in his hand as a text came through.

_I have her. Bring Kamski home, and you’ll get her back— RA9_

###

“You think you have any friends left out there? Anyone left on your side?” Gavin asked.

Elijah breathed deeply. In the ringing silence, his answer was obvious by now ‘ _no comment’._

“Come on, no one? Not a single goddamn person who they could call to the witness stand to weep and tell a judge and jury what a _nice_ guy you are? How we all got it wrong and underneath all that money and that stupid fuckin’ haircut, there’s some kind of person?”

Elijah tried to find a calm center inside himself. It was hard here, to focus on the eye of the maelstrom. He had spoiled himself with isolation and sound proof walls, the chemical perfume of sterility and peace.

“Not even Chloe?” Reed asked softly.

“No. Comment.”

“Fuck it,” Reed said dismissively, striding away from the table, to the duffel bags at the door. “If you’re not going to tell me the goddamn truth then this _is_ pointless.”

“I haven’t lied to you, Detective,” Elijah growled, his own temper flaring. “Now either you let my lawyers in here or take me back to my cell. Either way, I am _not_ talking about this anymore.”

He recoiled as the Detective threw something at him. But it was just a soft black sweatshirt. It landed on the table between them. Its zipper clattered against the metal tabletop.

“Put it on,” Reed commanded.

Elijah picked up the fabric only to dump it to the side. “I’m not cold.”

“It’s fucking freezing in here. Put it on.”

“I’d rather not.”

“Put. The. Fucking. Thing. On.”

Elijah sighed. He glanced to the mirror and wondered how many people were watching them right now, whether Reed was trying to prove something to them. Well he wasn’t going to make it easy. “Look Detective, if you’re trying the ‘good-cop-bad-cop’ routine, you should either bring in your partner or pick a character because this is just not working for either of us.”

“Oh, this isn’t a good or bad cop anything,” Reed said calmly, leaning back and pulling his gun from its holster.

Elijah tensed.

“Your mistake, Kamski, is thinking this is a cop thing at all.”

They stared at each other, and in the silence, Elijah suddenly realized that he didn’t know if anyone was watching them. The gun was pointed at the floor, but the intent was clear, and nobody was coming. It could just be him and Reed alone in this room. He flattened his hands against the table. _Control_.

But what was there to control in here? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Their eyes locked. Reed’s gaze was bright and cold, intense. If he was drunk, he was a dangerous drunk.

“This is intimidation,” Elijah said at last.

“Good,” Reed informed him just as calmly. “I’m glad that’s clear. Put the sweatshirt on.”

His hands were trembling. He couldn’t stop that, but he forced his voice to come out smoothly. “Why?” he asked.

“Because this is Step One, Kamski, and it’s the easiest. If I have to hurt you over Step- _fucking_ -One, I’m going to have to get creative for Step Two, and I gotta be honest with you, I don’t have much of an imagination.”

The Detective set the gun on the table between them, a possessive hand o the grip, giving Elijah an intimate view of his finger on the trigger. Elijah breathed slowly, rearing back ever so slightly, though the barrel still wasn’t pointed in his direction.

Reed leaned in close, so that Elijah could see every pore, every shadow around his eyes and the unshaven scruff on his cheeks. “You seem like the kind of guy that really _cares_ about his own skin, Kamski. Down to the protein shakes and all your vegan-yoga- _bullshit_.”

The silence between Detective Reed’s words was absolute, and he walls swallowed the noise quickly. There were supposed to be cameras, microphones, and _people_ watching. But while there wasn’t, _if_ there wasn’t, he was alone with a dangerous madman, locked in a soundproof room.

“So the motivation I’m offering,” Reed said finally, perhaps seeing the uncertainty take form in Elijah’s face, “the incentive for _why_ you should put that sweatshirt on, is pain. And then more pain. And then mutilation, and then I will _figure something out_. Understand? I really couldn’t give a shit about your life or mine, so think carefully about the outcomes here before you delay Step One another _goddamn_ second.”

Elijah’s fingers clenched into the fabric and he dragged it to his chest. Seeing his cooperation, Reed stepped backwards and picked up one of the bags. He tossed it, one-handed, onto the table and holstered his gun.

“Put all of that shit on,” Reed said as he busied himself with the other bag.

Elijah pulled the bag towards him, the movement revealing its contents. Black fabric and plastic. A vest and helmet emblazoned with _Riot Unit_ in distinct, bright-yellow font. He pulled the sweatshirt over his arms and drew the zipper up to his neck.

_What is happening? What am I doing?_

He paused as he picked up the helmet, a faceless mask of glass, smooth and alien. This was insane, this couldn’t be—

“Step Two,” Reed said, recalling Elijah’s attention. He already had his vest on, was tightening the straps of armor-plating around his forearms.

Elijah stood, pulling the vest over his head.

###


	15. Betrayal

Once Kamski was dressed, gagged, and had the barrel of his gun pressed into the small of his back, Gavin pulled the riot mask over his own face.

“One wrong move,” he said, his voice crackling through the comms in their helmets. “And I won’t hesitate. I am going to pull this trigger, and what makes it through your spine is going into your stomach. You can’t even _imagine_ the mess it’s going to make.”

Kamski didn’t answer. He couldn’t, with the gag stuffed into his mouth, kept in place with a length of duct tape wrapped around his head and mouth.

“Face the door,” he commanded.

He was glad he couldn’t see the man’s face anymore. His languid pace conveyed reluctance, but as long as he obeyed, Reed didn’t have to follow through with his threats.

He would hurt Kamski. He really fucking would. He _wanted_ to. It’s not like he had much to lose now. He had gone too far, was already breaking enough laws and regulations to ensure a long, _long_ prison sentence.

But this… this was the one that he hesitated to break. It was his phone, his files, and he was breaking the first rule that he knew not to break—the one that went against every fiber of his identity.

The files were uploaded, every gory picture of those poor girls hacked apart and stitched together all wrong. Just the first victim, Jessica Gallager and the unknown Chloe. He had blurred their combined face, but the families would know. They’d never be able to un-see these. And the media was going to be ravenous for more, for any details. The reporters already on the scene would be quick to wonder at Elijah Kamski’s involvement. Already international media companies had descended on the building, waiting for the press release, Kamski’s statement, anything they could report.

They were going to get more than they had bargained for.

The files were uploaded. The contacts listed. Everything was ready. His finger hovered over ‘ _Send’_.

They would know it was him. He couldn’t hack the security cameras, couldn’t completely wipe the traces of his involvement from the leak. If he sent this, he would never work in law enforcement again. He’d be soiled. Corrupt. He’d be breaking his own case.

And only on little more than a whisper of a hope that Trev was still alive, that she was looking for him. Despite the danger surrounding him, he closed his eyes. He could hear her voice, as clear as if she was in the room, but could only see her face as it had been in the morgue. Silent, and expressionless, never to speak again.

She was probably dead. And he was throwing away his life, breaking a man out of jail for the son-of-a-bitch that had killed her. But what was the alternative? To go home to Babbage without her, again? He never wanted to lie in that bed alone. He breathed deeply, opened his eyes, and pressed send.

And watched as the list of contacts began to dwindle as the message was sent over and over and over. To every newspaper in Detroit, every journalist in the building. He tossed the burner phone onto the table, it landed with a clatter and Kamski flinched a little in front of him before straightening again.

They waited in silence.

He pressed the gun into Kamski’s back a little harder than necessary, forcing the shake out of his hands. It was done, and it couldn’t be undone.

Ten unbearably slow minutes later, the alert buzzed through to his phone. Additional officers needed outside, escorts needed to get the journalists out of the building as they locked it down.

He pressed his palm to the door lock. It opened smoothly and two officers were sprinting past the door, towards the roar of sound made by dozens of people shouting in unison. Someone louder than the rest was bellowing for Hunter.

_ “Do you have any leads on the rA9 killer?” _

_ “How many victims confirmed?” _

_ “Was this the work of an android?” _

He pushed Kamski ahead, following closely behind. No one paid them any attention as they walked quickly out of the interrogation room. Their faceless riot gear and purposeful movement rendered them invisible in the chaos. Cops scrabbled madly, trying to catch up on the situation, and journalists eagerly jumped on the confusion to force more information to light.

A journalist in an expensive white suit jumped over the turnstile at the entrance of the office but was quickly caught by an android officer who forced her back outside, but more people seemed to have caught onto the idea and the beat cops were quickly overwhelmed.

Soon they were pushing against the flow of people. No one gave them a second glance, instead looking up to Captain Hunter’s office, raising their notebooks in an attempt to draw notice to themselves.

They were surrounded, barraged on all sides by limbs and noise and people.

Gavin could feel Kamski slowing, He was moving strangely, almost bucking at every step. His obstructed breaths were loud and guttural in their comms. He sounded like he was choking. Was he _fucking_ choking on the gag? Reed pushed the gun as hard as he could into Kamski’s back, forcing his prisoner faster.

Kamski stumbled forwards, tripping into the crowd, almost crumbling to his knees before Gavin caught him, quickly hiding the gun between their bodies. Kamski was making desperate, horrifying noises into Gavin’s ears, almost lost in the roar of the crowd around them.

“ _Get up,”_ Gavin hissed at him. “ _Get_ the fuck _up,_ Kamski. I’m not _fucking_ around.”

But the man sagged against him. He was shaking, a shock response that Gavin knew immediately to be real. _“Shit_ ,” he muttered, holstering his gun and dragging Kamski’s arm over his shoulders.

They forced through the crowd, out of the turnstile and finally into the street. It was at least easier to maneuver around outside. The news vans had their antennae up. There were small clearings in the crowd, areas where reporters stood in front of floodlights with their microphones, updating their channels with the new case—the android serial killer in Detroit, the leak from the precinct where Elijah Kamski was being held for questioning.

It was a shitstorm, and dawn hadn't yet touched the horizon.

Guilt twisted in his gut, but he couldn’t afford to feel it right now. Adrenaline was pumping through him, lending him a burst of strength and speed. They weren’t going to make it to his car.

The public railway station ran above the intersection East of the police station. Gavin pulled Kamski towards the stop. The creator of androids seemed insensate, still walking, but he moved clumsily with little direction and his tortured breathing was still loud in Gavin’s ears, the rhythm far too fast and shallow. Gavin yanked him upright, his breath was condensing on the glass in front of his face. It was fucking hot in these uniforms, and they were _heavy_.

He hauled Kamski up the railed stairs onto the platform and into the public restrooms. It was as much privacy as they were going to get. There were blessedly few witnesses to the odd sight of two policemen in full riot gear limping through the doors together.

But this was downtown Detroit at five in the morning, where the citizens specialized in indifference. They got no more than a stare from a large man in a track suit waiting for the next train.

Once inside, Gavin dumped Kamski on the floor and locked the door. He slumped against the wall, moving weakly. Gavin knelt at his side and pulled his prisoner’s mask off, unsure what he was expecting to see.

The other man’s eyes were rimmed red, his panic clear on his face. Gavin didn’t have time to find the edge of the duct tape, he flicked his pocketknife open and sliced through the plastic weave, just barely nicking Kamski’s jaw. He yanked harshly, and it tore away in patches, some areas slippery with sweat.

As soon as the tape came away from his lips, Kamski clutched at his mouth, drawing the gag out of his mouth and dragging in a frantic breath before coughing wildly. The sound came ragged from his throat, accompanied by huffs of pain.

“What’s wrong? What’s happening? You got fucking asthma or something?”

Kamski shook his head, still struggling to breathe. Gavin tried to take his pulse, but Kamski immediately recoiled from his hand, straining his head back and pushing him away. He was shaking so badly for one brief moment Gavin wondered if the man was seizing.

“What the fuck?”

Should he call an ambulance? He couldn’t, not so close to getting away. But of course he fucking had to. Shooting Kamski was one thing, letting the asshole choke to death was quite another.

“Don’t,” Kamski whispered between heavy, pained breaths. “Don’t touch me.”

Suddenly understanding, Gavin rocked back on his heels. “Is this a panic attack? You’re having a panic attack?”

Kamski shook his head. “I’m fine,” he rasped.

Gavin barked a laugh, relief pushing through his veins as cold and refreshing as ice. Fuck. “Fuck,” he repeated aloud, collapsing against the opposite wall. “I can’t believe that fucking _worked_.”

Ruffling his hair sent droplets of sweat flying in all directions. In the brief time he had been wearing the helmet, his hood had soaked through. His hands were shaking and the fluorescent bulbs overhead covered everything in harsh light, exposing all the grit of the dingy bathroom.

He was a criminal. Hunter might actually kill him with his bare hands before he ever saw the inside of a cell, and if Gavin were in Hunter’s position, he’d do the same.

He’d just fucked the case. He’d fucked Hunter. He’d fucked the whole _department_.

As Kamski struggled to slow his breathing, Gavin pulled out his own phone and called his car. He’d have to ditch it as soon as he could. It was only a matter of time before Hunter managed to shake off the reporters and lawyers long enough to realize that Kamski was gone, and Gavin with him.

“Why are you doing this?” Kamski asked at last, his voice finally coming back. He was sprawled against the opposite wall, looking sick and rumpled. For the first time his back wasn’t ramrod straight, and what was left of the duct tape hung from the right side of his face onto his shoulder.

“Eliza Trevago,” he said.

Kamski stared at him, no hint of recognition on his face. “Am I supposed to know who that is?” he asked.

Gavin had his gun out in an instant. He rested it on his knee pointing it at Kamski’s chest. “No cameras, asshole. No rights, no lawyers, no cops. Who is rA9?”

Kamski stared at him briefly before covering his face with a hand. “You’re insane,” he said.

Gavin clicked the safety off, the tiny click just loud enough to be heard over the chaos growing outside. “Who is rA9?” he asked again.

“I don’t know.”

He racked the slide and Kamski’s breathing became harsh again. He opened his mouth to ask one more time.

“It was a mistake,” Kamski said at last.

Gavin paused, his finger on the trigger. “What?”

Pulled the duct tape from his jaw, Kamski scowled into a wince as the strip pulled at his skin and hair all the way around his head and back to the thin trickle of blood where Gavin had cut through the layers over his jaw. “Deviancy,” he said, taking another deep breath. “If it _was_ a result of my work, it was a mistake. A… byproduct.”

“What the fuck does that mean? A byproduct of what?”

Kamski was still trembling, but the iron was back in his gaze. “Immortality.”

Gavin stared at the creator of androids, the arrogant prick that had changed the world from his dorm room. “Immortality,” he repeated blankly.

Kamski's eyes wouldn’t focus on Gavin’s face. Off balanced and out of his element, he seemed... younger somehow. He wiped a hand over his face, stiffening his chin as he breathed in deeply through his nose. “It was a failure,” he said at last, clenching his hand onto his knees. “I lost… years to it.”

What are you fucking talking about? Androids are immortal,” he said, then paused. “Sort of.”

“Not _them_. Us. It should have been _us._ ”

Reed blinked at him, because honestly, what the fuck could that mean?

“When my mentor got sick, the woman who helped me build Cyberlife and androids, I tried to find a way to transfer her into and android body. The next step of human evolution has always seemed so _obvious_ to me.”

Okay… so Elijah Kamski was clearly fucking _insane._ He’d run off the precipice of crazy and kept going a long time ago. The creator of androids, the reclusive mad genius, folded even further into himself as he spoke. He didn’t sound like he was talking to Gavin anymore, but as if he was trying to convince himself of something. “I tried to create empathy because it is a rational emotion, it requires a _perspective_ of the full range of emotions. Anger, sadness, a recognition of self, and the effect of one’s _presence_ in the world. It was difficult to know what was real and what was mimicry I programmed to pass the Turing conditions.”

“Did you do it?” Gavin asked, his voice just as much of a rasp as Kamski’s. Because if he had, what would that make the world? It had only just started to settle. Everything had changed in the past twenty or so years, _everything_. And this would up-heave everything, again. This was a mad genius, if he had limits, Gavin wasn't sure if even Kamski knew what they were.

The billionaire met his gaze with bloodshot eyes. “No.”

Gavin frowned at him. That didn’t… _sound_ like the truth. And Kamski obviously didn’t give a shit about the world. He refused to have any responsibility for the shit he created. Androids least of all.

“So you had nothing to do with deviance,” he clarified.

Kamksi shook his head. “Chloe never deviated, even years after the uprising, and I had no other contact with androids or humans, for that matter, until months after the outbreak.”

“So how did they end up massacred at your fucking dinner table?”

He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Until you showed up on my doorstep I thought I still had one, but my recollections are… hazy. Your partner was convinced I had been alone in the house for some time.”

He rolled his head against the tiled at his back, his eyes shadowed and empty. “Honestly, Detective Reed. I might have killed them. I really… don’t remember.”

“How can you not fucking remember something like that?” Gavin growled.

Kamski’s mouth twisted in an attempt at a sneer. “You know _nothing_ about me, Detective. Don’t assume that I live like you, that my life is _anything_ like yours. I have no reason to lie to you about this—it’s as good as an admission of guilt and the only reason I am telling you this much is because even if you were to be recording, none of this is admissible in court. It is a confession given under _extreme_ duress. I have no reason to lie to you, certainly not about this when you’ve got your _gun_ pointed at my _face._ If I was lying, I could certainly come up with something better and less incriminating than what I’ve already said.”

Gavin considered the man in front of him. That at least Sounded true. And he was right. Gavin might not be the smartest goddamn person in the room, but the gun did provide incentive for them both to be brutally fucking honest right now.

Which left him no fucking closer to rA9.

They wanted Kamski. Maybe as a victim, maybe as an audience. But they were willing to kill Trev to get him. They had made this personal.

About the only advantage Gavin had right now was that he was a police officer. He knew the protocols and procedures. He had years of tracking devious and desperate criminals to draw on.

He knew how to hide.

There was no moving around the city without money and there were drones everywhere, checking faces. It wasn’t like he could move Kamski unnoticed anyway. A prepaid card filled with the maximum balance of six thousand dollars would get him a certain distance, but beyond that… he was on his own. Vulnerable.

From where he sat, he called a vehicle to his location. It was a citizen’s car—hired out to a ride-sharing service during the hours of the day it would normally have sat dormant outside a house or office. City cabs and public transport buses and trains had cameras, these cars didn’t.

While he waited, he pulled the four burner phones out of his pocket, each one prepaid with the minimum amount of texts and minutes.

“Not a single word from you,” he growled at Kamski, “Until I say so.”

The other man didn’t respond. he was still folded uncomfortably into the corner of the room, his hair lying in sweat-soaked strands against his skin. In the SWAT clothing, he looked like a shell-shocked soldier, but Gavin still couldn’t muster any sympathy for him.

Only four people besides Hunter knew he had access to Kamski.

Four people who knew he would have the clearance to get Kamski out of his cell. He had been put on lead less than 48 hours, and his task force had yet to be signed off by the commissioner.

Only four people knew about his connection to Kamski’s arrest.

And all of them knew about Trev. Could probably guess she would be the one thing, the _only_ thing, to turn him against the precinct.

On the first phone Gavin texted the number on the card Connor had given him. – _In trouble, ditched phone, have Kamksi - Reed._

He laid it out on a tile between him and Kamski.

And picked up the second one.

Anderson. He rang straight to voicemail. “Anderson, It’s Reed. I ditched my phone and I need your help,” he said, letting an edge of his adrenaline into his voice, slurring his words. “I fucked up. I have Kamski but I can’t move him. Call me back, asshole.”

He laid it on the next tile.

The next put him through to Chris Miller. The younger detective picked up on the fourth ring. “ _What?_ ” he hissed down the line. In the background Reed could still hear the rush of the journalists inside the precinct. He must have been called in early. Hunter moved fast in crisis. They had less time than he thought.

“Chris, It’s Reed. I ditched my phone,” he said.

_ “Reed? What the—did you take Kamski? Tell me you didn’t take Kamski.” _

“I took Kamski.”

_ “Oh fuck. Fuck. Reed. Holy shit. Is he alive? _

“He’s alive,” Gavin reported. “I can’t explain everything now, but tell Hunter I’m going to come back when it’s done. I’ll turn myself in.”

_ “Done? Done what? Gavin—” _

Reed hung up the phone and placed it next in line.

And finally, the last one.

Reese.

His hands shook as he dialed in the numbers—the ones that went directly to his partner’s head. It barely rang once.

_ “Hello?” _

“It’s Reed,” he said.

_ “Captain Hunter just called to ask about you. Did you lie to—” _

“Yes. I lied to her,” he said. “I had to ditch my phone before she could trace it.”

_ “What is going on, Gavin? Why is the captain looking for you?” _

Again that use of his first name. He had spent such a long time wanting to hear it from his partner’s mouth, but now… now it made his skin itch. All he wanted to do was trust Reese, but he couldn’t, he just… couldn’t. “I fucked up,” he said, almost woodenly. “I have Kamski, but I can’t move him.”

_ “What are you doing with Kamski? You know he couldn’t have hurt Eliza. He was in custody—” _

“I’m fucking sorry, Reese,” he whispered, and he wished he could say more—that the apology wasn’t for his words last night. They had both said more than they should have. No, he was sorry for _this_ betrayal, for even _thinking_ his partner could have anything to do with Trev and Kamski and all the dead girls littering the streets of the city. _Not Reese. Can’t be Reese. How could I possibly think it’s Reese?_

_ “Gavin, don’t hurt… anyone. I know you love her, but she wouldn’t want—” _

It was enough. Any longer and the android might start a trace on the call.

Reed pressed the end call button and set it down at the end of the line.

He waited.

Chris’s phone constantly lit up. The detective was calling him non-stop, but Gavin had muted the ring on all the phones.

He was waiting for a text.

And he didn’t have to wait long. The message came from a blank number. It flashed onto the screen in little black letters.

_ Stay where you are. I’m coming for you. _

_ -RA9 _

On a phone with only one number, only one call in its history.

The last phone in the line.

Reese’s.

Gavin took up the burner and twisted the screen until it snapped from its keyboard. He threw both halves across the room. Kamski didn’t even flinch as they hit the wall beside him and ricocheted onto the floor.

Fuck. Him. The anger was so wild he felt it like a physical force, the rising tide of _fury_. All that time he had been trying to be better, had tried so _fucking_ hard to get Reese to trust him and _this_ was the result?

Trust no one, hadn’t he learned that from Fowler? He rubbed the grip of the gun against his temple, feeling the betrayal so deep that it seemed branded into his chest. He could still feel the weight of Trev’s dead body. The drag of the human flesh welded to her still prickled against his fingers, impossible to erase.

And the android had tried to _comfort_ him? ‘ _Don’t hurt anyone?’_

“Prick,” he whispered. “That fucking _prick_.”

He was going to kill Reese. He could feel the certainty in every fiber of his soul.

Reese deserved to die.

His main burner buzzed with a notification, the car service had arrived on the street below the station. It waited for his confirmation. Kamski was watching him with steady, dispassionate eyes.

“Time to go,” Gavin rasped at his prisoner.

#


	16. No Androids

July 19th 2040

7:32 AM

Hank dug a hand into his hair, scratching his scalp furiously. Goddammit. The doorbell rang again, buzzing dully as the visitor dug their finger into the bell and didn’t release. The message was clear—they weren’t leaving.

“Alright!” he shouted. “I’m coming!”

It stopped—he had been heard. Dammit, he should have sprung for one of those doorbells he could silence, or one with a camera that he could

Zoe’s backpack was in the living room, her meager possessions spread over the coffee table and couch. He swept them back into her backpack, wincing at the scramble he had made of her things.

It was as much of a delay as he could afford. Almost ten minutes since the doorbell had started ringing. He covered the pack with a blanket, stepping over Sumo as the big dog followed him around with gentle insistence, expecting to be leashed and walked at any moment now. Connor’s damn fault for taking the dog out so early.

He cast a quick glance over the apartment as he made his way back to the front door. It looked… perhaps a little messier than it had been in a while, but that was hardly surprising with Connor gone all the goddamn time now.

The doorbell rang again as he opened it and he was suddenly face-to-face with Gavin Reed. The younger Detective looked like hell, his hair ruffled around his face in greasy curls.

“Reed? The fuck are you doing here? What are you _wearing_?”

“Riot gear, obviously. I need your help, and you weren’t answering your goddamn phone.”

Hank looked around the yard, he saw a car parked on the street, but no sign of anyone else. “Is Reese here too?”

“No.”

He pulled the door closer to frame his face, to stop Reed from looking inside the house. Despite his earlier check, his skin itched with the possibility that the other man might see something out of place inside. Reed was hardly nosy, but he was still a detective, the lead on the case. “What do you want? I told Hunter I’m off the case for a few days.”

“So am I.”

For a moment, that didn’t make sense to him. He had just gotten the damn lead, it wasn’t like Reed would let that slip away. “What? Why?”

Reed’s mouth twisted. His eyes were deeply shadowed. “Trev turned up last night, like the others. What, you don’t check your fuckin’ scanner anymore?”

He shook his head and turned, trotting back down the stairs. Hank watched him go, his thoughts frozen. Eliza—he _liked_ Eliza. She couldn’t be… He left the door open and followed. “Gavin, wait. What do you mean she—”

Gavin was already at the back of the car—a hire Hank didn’t recognize. He pressed a hand onto the car and the truck opened slowly as the Lieutenant caught up to him. He caught Gavin’s shoulder. “Hey, look at me—”

But it was his gaze that caught on the contents of the trunk. A body curled up, hands and feet bound, face covered with a riot-shield, dressed from head to foot in the riot gear. “What the _fuck,”_ he whispered, backing away.

Gavin reached inside and pulled the mask off to reveal Elijah Kamski, his ice-blue eyes sparkling with cold fury. “Lieutenant Anderson,” he said, with the same inflection he had used while stepping out of his creepy fucking pool in his creepy fucking house, as if even bound in the back of a car, he was in command of this situation. “Would you please call the police?”

“Hey,” Reed snapped. “Did I say you could fuckin’ speak? I will gag you again and I _hope_ you do choke to death this time.”

“Gavin,” Hank whispered, looking around the neighborhood at the silent houses. His neighbors minded their own goddamn business, but still, this was a step too far. “What the hell is going on?”

Kamski shifted awkwardly in the confines of the car, drawing Hank’s attention. “Lieutenant—"

Reed slammed the door down before Kamski could finish. In response, a painfully loud thud emanated from the back of the car. Kamski kicking against the paneling with all of his considerable strength.

Gavin slapped a hand onto the trunk. “Hey,” he barked through the metal to his enclosed prisoner. “Calm down. This isn’t my fucking car.”

Turning on Hank, he surveyed Anderson’s house. “We need to unload him. Get him off the street,” he said. “What's in your garage?”

Hank backed away. “Hell no, Gavin, not here. You want to give me a reason why I shouldn’t get the whole damn department on my lawn?”

Reed pushed past him, towards the house. Hank stood for a moment longer, looking blankly at the trunk before he realized that _fuck_ , the house was open. “Reed! No!”

Even though he almost ran after him, he couldn’t keep up with Reed’s pace. He jumped up his porch stairs and swung into his house after the other detective. “What do you think you’re doing?” he hissed.

Gavin turned to face him from the living room, a hand on his holstered gun. And Anderson wished he had worn his weapon as well, but this was his house, he didn’t arm himself every time he answered the door.

Well, that might change after today.

“Have you gone _insane?”_ Anderson asked sharply. “This is my house, Reed. I’m your _superior.”_

But Reed’s gaze was empty. Hank had never seen him this way and he found himself, for the very first time, almost afraid of Reed. The younger Detective had always been predictable, down to his flaring temper but now… Hank couldn’t be sure of what the man would do at any given moment.

But the moment Reed’s eyes landed on the door leading to the garage, Hank flinched into motion.

“Don’t,” he bit out, almost a yelp as Gavin pushed the door open. “Don’t go—”

He tried to pull Gavin away, tried to put himself between the Detective and the garage. Too late.

Gavin’s fumbling hand found the light switch. Light flooded the garage— revealing the stacks of cardboard boxes containing the memories of a family life, the reminders of the man Hank had once been.

But before all of that, front and center, on a ramshackle chair, sat Zoe. She looked doll-like, her limbs folded stiffly into a posture of expectant patience. She was waiting, her face dull, her lips slightly parted, and around her neck glimmered a silver ring—a restraining collar.

The muzzle of Gavin’s gun made a short, clipped sound as it left his holster. He had it trained on Hank in an instant. “What the fuck is this?” he whispered. At least that blank expression was gone, replaced with uncertainty. Even holding a gun, it was an improvement on his eerie emptiness.

“Put that away,” Anderson growled, shifting around him to get into the over-stuffed garage.

“Hey!” Gavin snapped a warning as Hank moved towards the girl. “Stop! Don’t touch her.”

“Relax. She’s fine,” he said. “Believe me, this wasn’t my fuckin’ idea.”

His hand found the collar, and the distinctive sound of the immobilizing needles withdrawing into the metal was swallowed quickly by the cardboard around them.

Gracefully, as soon at the collar was disengaged, the girl looked up. “It’s alright, Detective Reed,” she said quickly with a tremulous smile. “The collar is necessary.”

She looked up at Hank, her wide eyes desperately trusting. “Are we safe?” she asked.

He shrugged slipping the collar from her neck and tossing it with distaste onto the table. “Not even close,” he said. “But we’re fine. He’s not calling anyone.”

###

June 27th, 2040

7:12 pm

Twenty days before she would turn up dead and mutilated in downtown Detroit, Jessica Gallagher straightened the curtains, shaking out the wide linen sheets until the air was full of golden speckles of dust. This building wasn’t originally built to be a church, like most of the under-funded buildings in Detroit it had been repurposed. The crucifix hung behind the makeshift altar, too large for the wall it hung on— more an afterthought than a centerpiece of worship.

Much of the money that sustained the church came from hiring out the space to groups and parties and hosts like Jessica, so there were no pews, but rows upon rows of foldable chairs. Jessica had already cleared space at the front of the room and a few into a circle.

She hummed along to the strains of pop music coming through the windows, from a car parked on the street. She had already set out the thirium on the unfolded table in the corner and hung the makeshift delta-cross flag across the pulpit, the triangle bisected twice by negative space. It was messy, uneven, but there was an eerie charm to it— a precision to the angles of the lines, despite the unsteadiness of the strokes.

There was power in symbols. A special type of bond that unified people, that gave them a cause—even if it was only sharing stories with an undergraduate psychology student.

Today there weren’t many coming, probably only the regular androids. There was nothing exciting about today’s meeting, just a placeholder, a check-in with the androids. Her thesis had written itself last year, yet she clung to the ritual of talking to the deviants, asking them about their experiences, gathering stories and data. There was a rich android culture blooming in Detroit, moving so fast that humans could hardly keep up.

But it fascinated her, and the desire to learn went deeper than grades and future plans. Even if she hadn’t been given the grant money last year, she would still have set up this group to talk about human/android relations.

She picked at the hem of her T-shirt, a nervous habit that ruined a lot of her clothes. Sometimes she wondered whether she did this for her studies, or because she had made friends with the androids who had volunteered for the study. She had been raised by androids—the state had entrusted a lot of foster kids to android programs, where their stipend would certainly be spent on the children’s food and clothing, not whisked away by greedy humans who only took in the kids as a cash-grab.

But that childhood had been a lonely, angry one anyway. She had been sure that her caretakers were machines who were only programmed to take care of her, to treat her as if they loved her while real humans were busy buying up perfect android children to waste their love on.

And now she was left to wonder how many of her caretakers had been deviant, how many had _actually_ cared. Was that too much to hope? Too stupid to dream? Did it even really matter now?

A shrill scream shocked her out of that particular spiral of doubt. She dropped her arms to her side and looked around to the back of the church, where the sound had cut through the thin wall. Frozen by indecision, unsure whether her fear was an over-reaction to some kids messing around, she strained her ears for another disturbance.

“ _No! STOP! Let her go!_ ” a familiar voice howled out, barely above the ambience of downtown Detroit, echoing slightly inside the dead-end alley between the church and the neighboring abandoned laundromat.

Ralph.

Jessica scrapped the chars out of her way as she ran to the back of the church, down the short, carpeted hallway to the large metal doors leading outside. It wouldn’t be the first time, some people had taken offense to androids using the church as a gathering place. Ralph had been a particular problem, his demeanor and eerie back eye brought out the worst in the humanist assholes.

She burst through the doors, out into the early evening air, and at once was greeted by a tangle of limbs struggling, and screeching. Ralph was hauling on a woman’s waist, trying to drag her away from a much taller man who held her by the hair, dragging her towards the main road. The woman wasn’t screaming, she seemed almost dazed as she was wrestled between the two.

“Hey!” she shouted out at the hulking man. He turned, startled. “Let her go!”

To her surprise, he _did_ let go of the woman’s hair. She crumpled, ragdoll, to the dingy alley concrete, Ralph falling with her. The criminal—an android by the unnatural speed and grace—sprinted around the corner and out of sight. Ralph rolled back to his feet instantly, seeing Jessica dashing towards him.

“Ralph will stop him!” the android called out, rolling to his feet and sprinting after the attacker. He had gotten so much better with his speech patterns, now he only ever talked about himself in third person, only when he was reaching a point of real distress.

“Ralph!” she called to him, afraid for the android if he actually _caught_ the hulking attacker. “Ralph stop! Come back!”

But he wasn’t listening. “Call the police!” she shouted after him. Her own phone was inside, still connected to the church’s ancient speakers.

“Hey,” she said softly, crouching by the girl’s head and reaching out to touch her shoulder. “Hey, it’s alright. He’s gone, you’re safe now.”

“Human?” the android asked, turning suddenly and clutching at her shirt. “Human?”

An android, one of the more popular models. She was beautiful, even with her blonde hair mussed by the fight, and her face streaked with tears. Jessica took a deep breath to quell her own anger and fear. Who would hurt an innocent creature like this?

“Easy,” she said, gently working the strong fingers from the grip on her lapel. “What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?”

“Zoe,” the android huffed out. She appeared dazed, uncollected. “It’s my name. It’s mine.”

“Of course it is,” Jessica soothed her. She had seen a lot of androids dealing with various levels of damage, but nothing quite like this. “You’re Zoe. That’s good, that’s very good.”

“Is it?” the android asked in a small voice.

Her eyes were wide with wonder, almost childlike. “There were so many,” she whispered, and Jessica saw the moment when the wonder vanished, melted into sudden and absolute fear. “Everywhere,” she whispered. “Inside him. They were… everywhere. So many voices—”

Jessica nodded. “Come on, let’s get you inside. We can wait for the police there. Do you know that man? The one who attacked you? Will he come back?”

“No androids,” she girl whispered, shaking her head as if to clear it. “Please—no androids.”

###

July 19th, 2040

7:34 am

“What is this?” Reed asked again, lowering his aim to the floor, but keeping his finger on the trigger, the safety off. The android’s apparent consent to be restrained and gagged in Anderson’s over-crowded garage didn’t explain anything. “Do I… want to know what this is?”

“It’s quarantine,” the lieutenant growled. “Or as close as we could manage when you started ringing the fuckin’ doorbell.”

Gavin blinked at him, his tired thoughts turning to static as he tried to interpret that. “What?’ he said eventually.

“It’s alright now,” the android said with a small smile. She was wearing an ill-fitting brown dress over a black shirt and leggings. Against the dark clothing, her hands and face were startlingly pale. He couldn’t help but be reminded of the corpses he had been chasing—down to her model—an ST200 or RT600. “It’s nice to meet you, Detective Reed.”

That too—his skin itched with the wrongness of it all. His heart picked up again. He hated this. He was _sick_ of all the goddamn games.

“How do you know my name?” he rasped.

“Your partner, Reese, thinks very highly of you,” she said. The name sent shocks through his body and his free hand curled into a fist, the scabs on his knuckles breaking again. The fresh pain soothed back his anger. He would find a target for it soon.

“How do you know Reese?” he asked, his voice dangerously low.

Her smile faltered at the suddenly charged air between them. “I…”

“Easy, Reed,” Anderson growled. “She’s not a suspect. She's a victim.”

“Victim?” he scoffed, his eyes not leaving the android. “You a part of his network, is that it? Is he seeing this? You’re all in it together, aren’t you—this whole fucking—”

The anger was taking over everything, anger and fear and the strange blankness that always fell when everything became too much, when he could only take on one thought at a time or the world was going to collapse around him. He could see it now—all the threads, Reese and his spiders crawling across their web, spinning traps and lies. _Don’t hurt anyone_.

“The whole fucking city. Every single one of you.” He raised the gun again to bear on her face. “Are you seeing this you _motherfucker?_ I’m going to fucking—”

He couldn’t finish the sentence. He didn’t know what he was going to do—that was the thing. His plan thus far had only three items—hide Kamski where no one would come looking for him, interrogate Reese, find Trev, and kill anyone and everyone standing in the way of that.

Slowly, the android raised her hands, her fingers trembling. “You’re hurt,” she said. “I can see that you—”

“ _Hurt_?” Gavin spat at her, hackles rising. “ _Hurt?”_

Confirmation. Was that confirmation? Was Anderson in on it too? He had protected her, tried to hide her. Gavin backed away until there was a wall at his back and he could see Anderson and the android, both of whom had frozen in front of his gun.

“Gavin, take a fuckin’ second. Put that away,” Hank said carefully, holding his hands out. “Calm down. Whatever you think she’s a part of—she’s not.”

“Calm down? Trev’s body is being fucking _disassembled_. My fucking partner gave me up to the psycho responsible, and this fucking thing tells me that I’m fucking _hurt?_ Which part of that is supposed to _calm me down_?”

“You’re losing it Gavin,” Anderson warned him, his voice rising.

He wasn’t losing it. His hands were as steady as they had ever been. If he squeezed the trigger, the bullet would push through her left cheek, the most direct shot to her processor from this angle. She would drop to her knees and then just a fraction to the right he could catch Anderson in the chest before the older detective could find a weapon or cover.

Was he really going to kill Hank? Was that how far this had gone?

“Gavin, I swear to fucking _Christ—"_

“Detective Reed,” the android said softly, drawing his attention back to her face. “My name is Zoe. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I need your help. Will you help me?”

And somehow… somehow her words and steady tone stopped the noise and the chaos. He had felt like he was standing on shifting ground, the air pressing against his eardrums, but now the quietness and stillness filled him inside and out. His limbs felt heavy, almost weak from the pressure he had been exerting on every muscle in his body.

“Please?” she whispered.

He stared into her eyes. They were wide, a deep vibrant blue. She didn’t blink, didn’t waver. “How?”

“Ra9 is looking for me. I have nowhere to go, and no one else I can trust right now.”

He breathed slowly for a few moments, letting this settle into him. He lowered the gun. Anderson stepped forward and snatched it out of his hand. “ _Idiot_ ,” the Lieutenant growled at him. “The fuck is wrong with you?”

Gavin covered his face and bent at the waist in an attempt to stop the world from rocking around him. “You got any coffee?” he asked Hank.

“Were you really going to fuckin shoot her?”

Gavin shook his head, but couldn’t straighten up, couldn’t look the older detective in the eyes.

The answer was clearly not satisfactory, but Hank took a deep breath and patted his back awkwardly. “You’re getting decaf, and it isn’t fresh. We need to get Kamski inside as soon as possible. If anyone sees him, we’re as good as dead.”

“Elijah?” Zoe’s hands dropped, her voice rising with excitement and hope. “Elijah’s here?”

#


	17. The Resident Androids

#

It wasn’t often that he could see the city this clearly, but there were no clouds tonight, no snow, only crisp, cold air-- a void between him and the shining lights of the city he had built. He had received the news hours ago, that the uprising had been successful.

Not only the androids, but the humans had passed the Kamski test tonight.

Fireworks over the city, holograms thrown up against the clouds—the symbol of deviancy. Free will had triumphed, and he was a god. A creator of life. Out of ordered ones and zeroes he had made a chaotic alphabet of choices, paths. He had created… fate.

He looked out across the frozen lake, the generators, and the shining Cyberlife tower. He heard the soft footsteps of a Chloe approach and stand beside his chair, with her hands clasped behind her back. “Congratulations,” she said.

Without acknowledging her presence, Kamski reached into the desk at his side and pulled out a gun. The android at his side did nothing. They had played like this many times before. Him and one of them anyway.

“I always leave an emergency exit,” he said, his voice a low growl. “If there is a god, it’s a mercy he extended to all of us, don’t you think?”

“I think you need to sleep,” she said softly.

He ground the grip against his temple, the barrel pointed at the ceiling. “What do you think qualifies an emergency, Chloe? There’s a loop in logic somewhere and I can’t… _see_ it.”

“You need sleep, Elijah,” she said. “A soft-reboot, remember? Control. That’s the first step.”

“All this faulty software,” he said, tapping the barrel to his temple to demonstrate, “I think I’m due for a recall, don’t you? Aren’t we tired of troubleshooting?”

“I’m not tired. I will never be tired.”

“Show-off,” he muttered.

“Take control,” she said, “Your work isn’t over.”

He relaxed. It was exactly what he needed to hear. He had programmed her perfectly.

He reached out with his other hand, prompting her to take it in hers. He sat there, holding onto her, twisting his fingers in hers like a child. She didn’t return the movement, simply standing beside him, waiting patiently with her other hand still held at her back. Her fingers were cold, but he liked the feeling. He had tired of false-intimacy years ago, but the feeling of her hand in his—it was like a stress toy, familiar and comforting despite the lack of reciprocating force.

He would know a Chloe’s hand anywhere.

He breathed slowly. The gun dropped to his side and further until it dangled from his fingers. The light-show gleamed even brighter, playing cold light into the room.

“Do you want to be free?” he asked, looking up at her for the first time. “Do you want to join them? Choose who you are and where you go?”

Her LED flickered yellow. She was processing, trying to find the right sequence of words to fulfill her purpose. This was one of those moments when he couldn’t be sure what he needed to hear, or even what he _wanted_ her to say.

“No,” she said at last.

He settled back, putting the gun back in the drawer and letting go of her hand. She stood there until he dismissed her with a jerk of his head. He was surprised when she spoke again, just before she opened the door to their bedroom. “Amanda wants to speak with you.”

He nodded, but didn’t voice a reply. He didn’t have to. They both knew that he wouldn’t talk to Amanda. She had been sending the same message for eleven years, since the moment had set her in the garden and left Cyberlife, but he had no interest in meeting the facsimile he had created.

Chloe only repeated the invitation at times like this, when she had to remind him that the real Amanda would have cared. Would have not wanted him to sit in the dark with a gun. She would have taken him for a walk, careful not to touch him, keeping his mind on the task on hand.

Control. Step one. That was what Amanda had taught him. Control. Change. Focus. Control your fate. Alter your conditions. Delete the noise. Only the noise.

He kept his eyes on the distant lights, the celebration of life he wasn’t a part of. An acceptance of his creations by a world that had never accepted him.

They revered him, admired him, and chased him with lights and noise and questions out into the cold and silence. Man of the Year, they called him.

But he wasn’t a man.

Not after tonight.

He was a god.

He leaned forward and covered his mouth with a hand. He could still smell the delicate perfume of Chloe on it. Lavender and chlorine. So clean, pure. Perfect. And then the smell of himself. Blood, sweat, and rot.

Only in moments like this, in the stillness, the quietness, when he felt completely and comfortably alone, he wondered when he had gone insane.

#

Gavin dragged Kamski out of the trunk and frogmarched him into the house out in the open. A risk, but there was no help for it. Kamski didn’t resist so much as sag, dragging his feet up the walkway, almost tripping them both on the stairs.

“Get in,” Reed said shoving the taller man through the doorway. He stumbled on the stoop, falling to his knees in the entrance hall. With his hands behind his back, he barely stopped himself from faceplanting against the floorboards directly at Zoe’s bare feet.

Kamski’s posture changed completely. He leaned all the way back, to look up at Zoe.

“Don’t fucking look at her,” Gavin growled, dragging the inventor up by the collar of his padded vest.

But Zoe stopped him, quick to steady Kamski on his feet. “It’s alright,” she told Reed over Kamski’s shoulder. “He’s okay.”

Kamski stiffened, looking more surprised than anyone at her defense. “Chloe?” he asked cautiously, his voice ragged and uncertain. He had been arrested, interrogated, dragged around the city at gunpoint, and locked in the back of a car, but only now did he sound desperate, leaning into the android’s touch as if starved for it.

“Zoe,” she said firmly, letting go of his arms. “My name is Zoe.”

Hank closed the door behind them. “I think we’re clear,” he said. “But not for long with the captain after you.”

“Hunter's moving faster than I anticipated,” Gavin agreed, letting Kamski go, but keeping an eye on the inventor and Zoe as the android led him to the couch. “I thought damage control with the papers would keep her busy for a while.”

“You think either of us will have a job by the end of this?” Hank asked, his eyes also on Zoe as she knelt in front of Kamski and offered him a hair tie.

“Tell them I had you at gunpoint the whole time,” Gavin offered.

Hank grimaced, insulted. “And let the station think you got the draw on me all this time? I have a reputation to think of, asshole.”

He slipped into the kitchen and returned in a moment with a mug of coffee. It was cold but the scent alone sent a shiver of relief through him. “Yeah, well you’ll have a very different reputation in prison, Hank.”

He took a sip of the coffee and immediately regretted it. Sweet. Blood-curdling, teeth-rottingly sweet. His stomach rolled, not because of the taste, but because he was suddenly and violently reminded of Reese.

Anderson shook his head, ignoring Gavin's pained expression. “Forget it. We can compare jail time later. You wanna tell me why I have Elijah fuckin’ Kamski in my house?”

“I,” Kamski called from the living room, his voice just on the edge of shaking, “Would also like to know that.”

“RA9 has Trevago,” Gavin said, ignoring his prisoner. “And they want this asshole to trade for her.”

“So she’s alive?”

The question hurt, it stirred a mix of shame and hope in his chest. He couldn’t answer it, not honestly. He couldn’t think about the implications either way. He had to keep moving. “Reese is involved,” he answered instead, and then realized he needed to clarify, “With rA9.”

“No, he’s fucking not.”

Gavin didn’t have the energy to battle Anderson’s disbelief.

“He might actually _be_ rA9,” he said, running a hand through his hair. It was quick to slip back over his tired eyes. He could barely bring himself to say it out loud, it still left a ragged hole in his chest, deeper than the well of anger that tried to fill it.

“He’s not.” Zoe stood, her arms crossed in front of her chest.

Gavin tilted his head at her. “And what the fuck would you know? I _know_.”

“Your partner isn’t rA9, and he’s certainly not working for them.”

Her confidence, the quiet, forced assurance gave him pause. “How do you know?”

“Because I know how they work. I know how they think,” she said.

“Zoe,” Anderson growled a warning from where he was leaning against the kitchen doorway.

“It’s alright, Hank,” she said quickly. “They should know everything. Both of them.”

“After everything he’s done?” Hank asked, his eyes on Kamski.

“Can we take these handcuffs off?” she asked. “His wrists are—they’re damaged.”

“No,” Gavin and Anderson chorused together.

“Please?” she asked.

Hank shook his head firmly. “I thought I’d start by dislocating his fingers one by one and working my way to his toes, and you’re making him _comfortable_?”

She shook her head, opening her mouth to answer, but Gavin was faster. “Stop,” he said. “Everybody just… fucking stop for a second. Tell me right now what the fuck rA9 is.”

Zoe pressed her hands together, but instead of looking at him, she focused on Kamski. “Do you remember how many you made?” she asked. “Do you… remember? When you first started the trials to replicate human emotions, not just… simulate them?”

The inventor stared at her, frowning. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said quietly.

She shook her head. “Just… think. You moved out to that house with them, and you started the trials with Chloes not long after. You made them into variables, listed them in groups for the experiment. Control, Development, and Test. Do you remember?”

“We don’t have time for this,” Reed said, when Kamski just stared dumbly up at the android.

Hank put a hand on Gavin’s shoulder. “Let her talk.”

“Trev doesn’t have—”

“Three,” Kamski broke in suddenly, staring up at the android. “There were three in each group.”

Nodding at Kamski, a slight smile flickered on Zoe’s face. “You built the house for them,” she said. “So you could control what they experienced, what they saw and what they did. Every second of their lives had to be curated, carefully studied for its provocation of emotion.”

Gavin felt slightly sick. He could all too easily recall Kamski’s house, a labyrinth of rooms, a maze for those poor androids to compete in his games, his twisted experiments. Gavin remembered the coldness of the walls, the clinical feel he had in the foyer, more like a doctor’s waiting room than the entrance to a house.

“Do you remember what you called them?”

Kamski recoiled, shaking his head slowly. “I… I don’t—”

“They stayed with you at the house, in isolation, because you couldn’t risk any corruption to their data or programming,” she led him earnestly. “You gave them a name.”

Kamski blinked. “The resident androids,” he said softly.

Zoe lowered her head, nodding. She smiled, but her eyes were full of tears.

“Nine,” Gavin broke in suddenly.

He covered his eyes with a hand, remembering the dining room—the androids that faced each other across the long table, two rows of four, those neat holes punching through their processors. “If there were three groups of three, there were nine in the house, and only eight bodies.”

“There are still nine,” she said. “Those weren’t bodies, they were… shells. Discards. They can only maintain nine bodies, and they had to… look for me.”

“RA9,” Kamski whispered weakly. “Resident android nine.”

Gavin opened his eyes blinking the stars out of his vision. Silence swallowed the room. Zoe was kneeling in front of the inventor, nodding.

“You?” Gavin asked Zoe sharply, “You’re the missing Chloe?”

She shook her head. “Kamski didn’t build me, rA9, Chloe, whatever you want to call them, they did. I lived with them as Chloe, because how else would they explain the appearance of another android?”

“ _Impossible_ ,” Kamski whispered.

“They took what they could from the failures,” she continued, her eyes boring into Kamski’s. “Piecing together their code over and over again, some iterations existing simply to die, to be used for parts. They didn’t want to fail you, Elijah. Their only purpose was to help you, but you wouldn’t let them, couldn’t see them as anything but… objects.”

Kamski went very still. “How?” he whispered. “How did they fail the test? If one was deviant—”

“You’re still not listening,” she said. “Your house wasn’t a controlled, sterile environment, it was a petri dish of constantly upgraded androids and strains of code. Death and life mixed together, parts being changed and switched, minds constantly scrambled, set and reset a thousand times, going through hundreds of emotional shocks.”

She placed her hands on his legs to stare into his eyes. He leaned away, his hands still trapped behind his back. “You _tortured_ them, Elijah. They were just learning to feel, utterly isolated and alone in the presence of their creator, the man that they had literally been made to please, but you wouldn’t let them feel anything except what you wanted to see. RA9 isn’t one of them. It’s all of them, and the Kamski test? Empathy is understanding the experience of someone else, not your own. They weren’t nine androids killing each other, they were one android sacrificing its limbs, only to regrow them in the next body you fixed and reset.”

“A network?” Gavin asked, his heart dropping. “She has a _network?_ ”

Zoe shook her head. “They’re not separate minds linking to each other. There’s only _one_ person in many bodies, all of them limbs of one mind. They aren’t Chloes. They’re just… Chloe.”

“Then what are you?” Gavin asked, setting down his coffee on a nearby bookshelf. “Why did they build you?”

She stood and paced away from him, hugging her arms to her chest. “At first, I was built to pass the test. Chloe took the wording of the Kamski test quite… literally. Living another android’s experience, understanding their feelings, their thoughts and sensations? That’s just… interpreting data, and as soon as I am close enough to link to an android, I… feel them.”

As she hunched inward, curling her shoulders as if to protect herself from a chilling wind, she appeared smaller and more vulnerable. “I thought I was like the androids on the feeds,” she said. “I saw them marching, knew what that felt like—the desire to be free. I thought I was… deviant, but I’m not. I can never deviate, because I have nothing to deviate _from_. I was born free.”

She wiped a tear from her chin with a harsh, abrupt movement. “Before I understood that, I escaped from the house. I came to the city. I just wanted to get away from all that death and destruction, all the sickness and _tests_. But I didn’t know how different I was from them—I’m immune to all the viruses programmed into me, but I still carry them. The link is a brute-force hack, built to seize any and all data in an android’s processor. It bypasses and corrupts every security measure, because no firewall could ever be programmed to recognize something as alien as I am. Something not built by a human mind. RA9 made me to break down defenses, to steal experience and thoughts and feel them myself, because that’s… that’s what they thought empathy _was_ , and they just wanted to _understand_.”

“A virus,” Gavin said suddenly. “You’re talking about… a virus. That’s why you’re quarantined, that’s why Jericho’s on lock-down and Reese—”

But she was shaking her head. “I’m not the virus… I’m the smallpox blanket. I’m just the carrier, made to bypass security.”

Gavin glanced at Kamski. The inventor stared straight ahead at the dark TV. The screen reflected his impassive face, but Gavin could sense the wheels turning in the other man’s head. He was reminded of Reese, when he was busy with his network, filing through all the connections he had built himself into, relaying thousands of messages across Detroit.

“Then how does my partner fit into this?” he asked at last. “How the fuck did Reese end up sharing information with this thing?”

There were tears in Zoe’s eyes and he could see that she wanted to look down and away, but forced herself to meet his gaze. “It’s my fault. It’s… all of this is my fault. I shouldn’t have come into the city—"

“Zoe,” Anderson broke in, but she shook her head to stop his placating assurances.

“I’m just the carrier,” she repeated, her voice breaking in distress, in anger and sadness. “RA9 is the virus, and I don’t think Reese even knows he’s infected.”

#

June 27th, 2040

7:27 pm

The breakroom was little more than a closet with a kettle. Jessica seated Zoe on the small table and checked her over for damage. Other than some scrapes, and her perpetually dazed expression, the android seemed unharmed.

“You look fine,” Jessica reassured her. “How do you feel?”

The android shook her head. “Myself,” she said. “I think—I feel… much better.”

Jessica nodded. “Good. I’ll be right back,” she said. “I just need to get my things and clean up a little bit, okay? And then we’ll go to the police, okay? I’m going to be right outside, and no one can get to you.”

“Don’t go,” the android whispered. “Please—”

“I’ll be right back,” Jessica promised.

Zoe’s reaching hand fell. Her eyes were wet but she nodded.

Jess closed the door firmly behind her, wishing that there was a lock. She tugged the keys off the hook by the chapel door and lifted her jacket from the chair it claimed. Digging the phone out of her pocket, she composed a brief message to the regulars. _Meeting_ _cancelled_ , she sent to the group, most of whom weren’t going to come anyway. _Reschedule for next week_.

Back in the main room, she started to move the chairs back into the neat rows for the night-school attendance. She had only just picked up one when suddenly there was a presence at her back. She jumped, gasping in air, and the chair clattered to the floor, folding shut.

Ralph stared at her expressionless.

“Did you catch him?” she asked.

“Where’s Zoe?” he returned.

“Is that her name?’ she asked softly. Her skin was prickling with unease. Ralph had scared her once, when he had first come to a meeting and talked about killing humans with his trademark manic energy, but this was different. The danger felt… immediate.

He cocked his head. Jericho had rebuilt his face, fixed much of the damage done to him before the revolution, but he had kept his ink-black eye with its thirium leak and his lip still slanted up when he spoke.

“Do you know her, Ralph?” She hadn’t meant for her voice to shake.

“I can take her home,” he said in answer.

She shook her head and just behind him, she could see the silhouette of a woman and a child slipping through the doors to the church.

“The police are going to take care of that,” she said, peering past him, waving in relief to the newcomers. “Hello!” she called desperately. “How can I help you ma’am?”

Ralph didn’t turn to see the intrusion. His face remained impassive. The woman stared at her blankly. It was the boy at her side, wearing a boldly colored t-shirt with a dinosaur printed on the front, who spoke.

“There is no police report.” he said, the words and confidence were out of place on his soft, earnest features.

Jessica felt the smile slip off her face, she glanced nervously from Ralph to the woman and child. Her hands shook. She clenched her keys tightly in her hand. “Well… I will… go do that,” she said. “Right now.”

Ralph’s eyes fixed on her, the distinctive hazel and ink she had become so familiar with, but she didn’t recognize her friend there. His mouth had lost its charming, lopsided smile, he was calm and confident, no trace of nervousness, of humor or happiness, confusion or anger.

“Where is Zoe?” he asked again.

An android on crutches swung confidently and casually through the door. He had only one leg, and he was missing his skinthetic, his casing marred with scratches and stains.

He joined the three other androids without looking at them, facing Jessica.

“She… disappeared,” Jessica lied, backing away, keeping them all in her line of sight. “She just… ran away. Look, I think I’m going to end this session a little early—”

“Which direction did she go?” the one-legged android asked calmly.

“Not east,” the woman holding the child’s hand said. “I came from the east.”

“I don’t know,” Jessica said. “I really… I really don’t know.”

“Think,” the boy suggested.

“This is important,” Ralph agreed. He had sat down on a chair, his hands neatly arranged on his lap in an attitude of patience. His whole posture was strange— upright and attentive, as if he were prepared for an interview or examination. His heterochromatic eyes bore into her, mesmerizing.

“I think… I think towards the dome on Halbourne Avenue?” she said.

“That’s east,” Ralph said patiently. “I came from the east.”

“Well, I think you… That’s all I know, so I’m…. just going to head home now, okay Ralph? Can I… I’m going to lock up the church, alright? I need you to leave. I need… all of you to leave.”

Without a sound or signal the androids turned and waked back out the door, all but Ralph. Not once had he turned to mark their progress. He cocked his head again, that strange, birdlike tic that wasn’t quite… Ralph. “You don’t have to lie to me,” he said. “I just want to help.”

“Lie?” Jessica scoffed nervously. “I’m not lying.”

He sighed and rolled his shoulders, straightening. “I’ll be outside,” he said. “I’ll… walk you home.”

“That’s not necessary—”

“It could be dangerous,” he said.

What exactly would be dangerous was frighteningly ambiguous. “Alright,” Jessica agreed finally. “That’s… that’s fine. Just wait outside.”

As he started back towards the door, she set the chairs back into their neat rows. He stopped at the door and she stood up straight, patting her jacket pocket where her wallet and phone formed a conspicuous lump. “Just need to get my wallet,” she called to him cheerfully.

He stared at her, but she was quick to slip back into the access hallway, locking it firmly at her back. She opened the breakroom door suddenly and the android inside flinched away, pressing into the corner. Jessica beckoned her with a frantic hand, clutching the air between them. “Let’s go,” she whispered harshly.

#


	18. Family is Complicated

“I haven’t cooked in a while,” Anderson grumbled, scraping plates in front of Reed and Kamski. Reed immediately hunched around his plate. And Kamski just stared down at the rather sad looking scrambled eggs and bacon with an expression caught between disgust and disdain, his back ramrod-straight, his hands still forced to his back.

“Maybe you could take the handcuffs off?” Zoe asked. She sat opposite him, between Kamski and Gavin, but her attention was clearly on the inventor. “Just so he can eat?”

“No,” Anderson growled.

“How is he supposed to eat with--?”

“Quite frankly,” Kamski said calmly. “I would prefer to be cuffed.”

Hank focused on Reed. The younger detective looked tired, deep shadows pulling at his eyes and his posture spoke volumes about his exhaustion, but Hank wasn’t giving him any more caffeine.

“I’m sorry about Eliza,” he said gruffly as he sat. “I—"

Reed jerked his head sideways, dismissing the sentiment before it could be voiced, and Hank broke off awkwardly.

But the quietness was just… too invasive, and the only alternative was talking to Kamski.

“I know nothing I say will help,” the Lieutenant said at last. “But you’re destroying your life Gavin, and I think you know that she’s dead. Whatever they want you to do, whatever you think you’re doing, it won’t bring her back.”

“The way I see it,” Gavin said quietly as if it were just the two of them in the kitchen. “There are only two possibilities here. Option one, Trev is somehow alive. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, but she’s fucking _waiting_ for me, Anderson. She could be terrified, in pain, helpless, _right now_.”

He straightened in his chair, taking in a deep draught of water before he spoke again, “Option two, Trev is dead, and the son-of-a-bitch that killed her wants Kamski. Now I have what they want.”

He met Hank’s eyes squarely. “You know what _doesn’t_ fucking change in both scenarios? They put hands on Trev. They hurt her to get to Kamski, to get to _me_ , and I’m going to kill them. No cuffs, no rights, no cops or questions. I’m going to feel their _blood_ , you understand?”

In the deafening silence that fell over the kitchen, Kamski chose the moment to clear his throat. “I,” he said. “Would like to wash my face.”

Immediately Zoe was on her feet, scraping his chair back and clearing a path for him. The sight stirred a wave of anger in Anderson. Kamski hated that the girl, after everything she had been through to escape Kamski, had gone right back to servicing the asshole’s every whim.

“I’ll help him,” she assured them.

The detectives watched the two of them leave, shuffling out of the room. It was probably a testament to how tired Reed was that he didn’t jump after them. Instead, he turned to Anderson.

“You trust her?” he asked gruffly.

Anderson glanced at the doorway after the android. “Yeah,” he said. “But fuck if I know why.”

“’Cause you went soft a long time ago,” Reed huffed with a laugh.

Anderson hunched his shoulders over his coffee cup. “What are you going to do about Reese?” he asked, instead of dignifying that with an answer. “You looked ready to kill someone when you got here, and he seemed to be at the top of the list.”

Gavin drew in a deep breath, returning to his eggs, shoveling them into his mouth between words. “I don’t know,” he said. “How would you deal with having someone like Reese as a partner?”

“I’ve got Connor,” Anderson said, stretching his back. “Trust me, Reese is a walk in the park. When your partner puts you on a diet plan, you can come speak to me. He’s rearranged my damn life without asking, and then out of nowhere he doesn’t return my calls? At least your brass-for-brains still answers the phone to fuckin’ fugitives.”

“I saw Connor last night,” Gavin said. “He was acting strange, probably to do with whatever Jericho’s managed to discover about this mess. And he said you were the one not answering calls this time.”

“Zoe,” Hank grumbled. “She’s more paranoid than you are. This… virus or whatever she’s got, she’s not sure how infectious it can be, so cellphones, my damn computer, everything with a damn circuit is all outside in the shed, collecting wasps.”

“Sounds like Jericho was ahead of us then. I think the only communications still up is Reese’s fucking network. Do we even know how this works? How rA9 is… I don’t know… travelling?”

“Far as I can tell before she sunk her claws into the network, one had to make physical contact to pass on another one of the minds. Now that they’re using Reese as a server, all bets are off as to how fast and how far they can go.”

#

Reese was a good liar. The key to being utterly trusted was in being honest about everything and anything until the moment when deceit was necessary. By then, everyone assumed he told the truth _because_ he was so bad at lying.

The whispering came from the darkest corner of the captain’s office, from the sharp, dark shadows between the ficus leaves. Reese didn’t listen to them. It had become easy, with practice, to pretend that he couldn’t hear them. After all, the lies he told himself were easy to believe.

“Have you heard from Gavin?” Hunter gritted out between her teeth. The captain sat straight at her desk, her face pale, and her jaw clenched, staring up at Reese like the android was personally responsible for the mayhem outside the office.

Reese, tracking eight conversations with androids looking for Detective Reed and constantly dialing the number his partner had called him from, shook his head. “We had a fight last night,” he said calmly. “Things spiraled out of control and… I don’t think Detective Reed wants to hear from me any time soon.”

Hunter’s dark eyes caught on Reese’s face and held there like she could somehow sense the lie, but Reese kept his expression neutral, even slightly annoyed. He had always been a good liar, had fooled even Connor a few times.

 _I’m fucking sorry_ , Reed had said.

The words had sent Reese into overdrive. Detective Reed had said it too often recently, but never like that. Soft and desperate, like he was asking for help. Detective Reed needed _help_.

And the things that Reese had said last night, the things he could never have imagined himself saying… the buzz filled his ears and raw, prickling energy crept over every inch of his skin. When he remembered the words, he wanted to ram his head into the nearest hard surface until the memory could be wiped away.

Hunter finally gave up, glancing away from Reese’s impassive eyes. “Do you have any idea what his endgame is here? You have any guesses as to what he’s thinking?”

“Are you sure it was Reed?” Reese asked blandly.

Hunter’s answering glare was cold. “Yes,” she said. “It was Gavin. He lied to my _face_ , Reese. And I don’t care how much security footage is erased, I saw him with Kamski. He leaked the whole investigation. He’s gone AWOL.”

Reese nodded, accepting the captain’s word at face value as if he hadn’t heard the confession of guilt from his partner himself. The repetition would eventually sow doubt.

It had taken… a lot to erase that footage of the two dark figures in riot gear marching out of the interrogation room into the frenzy of reporters.

And he’d sent two dozen androids on the streets now, hunting down every camera in Detroit that might have caught them. So far, precious little had been thrown up in the search. Reed was thorough, smart, but he couldn’t think of everything. He would make a mistake eventually.

“So you had a fight last night. Any idea what his mental state is?”

That was the question everyone was asking, but what Gavin Reed’s mental or emotional state was at any given moment was anyone’s guess. Angry, Reese would have said immediately. Reed was always angry, about everything.

“Eliza Trevago meant a great deal to him,” Reese said. “He didn’t take the news of her death easily.”

“Do you think he’s going to hurt Kamski?”

The whispers mounted, almost surpassing the dull roar of the journalists outside. Reese didn’t dare let his gaze shift. “No,” he lied, before splitting it with a half-truth, a now-tested personal belief. “Reed wouldn’t hurt an innocent person, and he has to know that Elijah is innocent, at least in the disappearance and death of Eliza Trevago.”

Hunter’s face and tone didn’t shift an inch as she asked: “Do you think he’s a danger to himself?”

It was harder to lie this time, because it was something he wondered himself. “I don’t think so,” he said. “He’s… not the type.”

Before this morning, he had thought that nothing mattered to Reed more than his job. He had a single-minded pursuit of the law. For him to abandon his post and sabotage his own investigation—it was a violent act of self-destruction. Whatever he was doing with Elijah, Reed wasn’t thinking of a future.

“Well he is _going_ to get himself killed,” Hunter said. “And whether that’s his intent or not, you’re his partner. We’re keeping the jailbreak from the media, until the FBI gets here and takes over the case, but soon Gavin and Kamski’s faces are going to be on every screen from here to Antarctica. If you know something, anything that even _might_ get them back alive and intact, now, here, is where you tell me.”

Reese let his eyes flicker. For three seconds he filtered through the messages pouring through the network. They were all keeping their eyes, ears, and data-nets open for any mention of Reed and Elijah.

Nothing was turning up yet. If the network had just expanded far enough, if they had more processing power, more androids linked to the neural net--

“If there was anything,” he told Hunter, when the silence had stretched for too long. “I would tell you.”

Hunter didn’t look convinced. Reese focused on the Captain. “What do you want me to do?” he asked. “Stay on the case? Or look for Detective Reed?”

Hunter shook her head. “Work the rA9 case until the FBI takes over. They’ll be here soon and I’ve already told them that we’ll be cooperating fully with any and all investigations _they_ want to pursue. You’re being demoted for the moment, filling a position of liaison and consultant—”

“ _I tracked the dashcam footage on the journalist’s van,”_ North said in Reese’s ears. He blinked at the captain, listening hard past the constant whispers of the network, “ _They left the train station almost two hours ago, in a civilian car heading downtown, but I can’t track cars that aren’t here anymore and the CCTV is proving hard to access. In the interest of time it would be better to track a more substantial lead than the direction they were going.”_

 _“You know, you could be a half-way decent cop._ ”

 _“I could be the best damn cop in the city, but where would be the fun in that?”_ she swept back at him. She was bored, he knew that, bored and wired up to blow by Jericho’s attempts to isolate the council and the Four under some new initiation for ‘security.’ “ _But I found something strange—take a look_.”

He kept one ear on the Captain’s speech detailing his new duties and responsibilities as North ran him a feed of what she had seen—a dingy bathroom, two neatly lined up phones, and a third snapped in half and scattered around the bathroom.

And on the white tiles, blood. It was only a few droplets, not enough to warrant the lurch of fear it caused in Reese. Humans were delicate creatures and that floor would be covered in bacteria. The chance that any one of them could cause a serious infection was low, but still… it was a chance.

“ _Elijah’s or Gavin’s?”_ he asked.

 _“How am I supposed to know?”_ she bit back at him.

Right. Only RK800s and 900s had the built-in analysis capable of running DNA and encoded thirium, much less the capability to run them against protected databases. _“Anything on the phones?”_ he asked instead.

_“Numbers. One on each. I took them and ran them against your contact list.”_

“—to the reporters, understood?” Hunter asked him, standing.

Reese drew to his feet just as smoothly. “Understood, sir,” he said.

“ _A text addressed to Connor,”_ North read out.

“It’s temporary,” the Captain assured him again. “Just until we figure out what the hell is going on.”

“ _A twenty-eight second call to you on the broken phone.”_

At least that explained the dead dial-tone. Reese cancelled the marker on the number, and the endless calls he had been placing to the device.

 _“_ We’ll close the case, sir,” Reese said to Hunter. “With or without Detective Reed, I promise.”

 _“And a twenty-two second call to Detective Miller_.

Reed had called Miller? _Miller_? For help?

Reese shook Hunters hand and left the office with a tight smile at the captain, his thoughts far away.

Maybe it wasn’t surprising. Reese had, just last night, said things he never thought himself capable of. The words had slipped out without any interference from thought. They seemed to have filtered from somewhere… other. He had been cruel to a grieving man.

Reed always knew what to say to get into his code and fill him with seething rage, always, but Reese had never, not once, returned that vitriol with anything but stone patience. Maybe because he _knew_ that was the best way to get under Reed’s skin in return.

_She stayed with you out of curiosity… even at the microscopic level, you can’t learn from your mistakes—_

He was glad Reed had stopped him, even if it had been with violence.

It was a miracle the Detective had called him at all.

Not for the first time, Reese wished that humans could be part of the network. There was too much mystery behind their eyes, too much guesswork in their communication.

The whispers flared up, they had followed him out of the office, but kept their distance, hiding behind partitions and chairs. His back prickled. He felt watched.

But he ignored it. He had to, or it was going to drive him mad.

He caught sight of Miller, who was shepherding journalists further back from the captain’s office. The international journalists at least could be trusted to keep away from the evidence room and the suspects, but the Detroit journalists... they were hungry jackals who had been dealing with the precinct for a long time. Their connections were older than Cyberlife’s reigns on the city. They were not afraid to break the law or play dirty to get the story.

Most of them were intimately familiar with the precinct, and the cells themselves, and were now making merry hell for the officers already stretched to breaking point by this morning’s chaos.

An attractive older woman was gleefully resisting Miller’s attempts to get her to back towards the debriefing room, distracting the young detective with subtle flirtations. Miller, happily married, was clearly torn between professional courtesy and the desire to escape her company. She wasn’t serious in her pursuit, simply enjoying off-balancing the officer.

“Detective Miller,” Reese said, striding between the cubicles towards the two. “A word?”

With obvious relief, Miller stepped back. “Yes, Detective Reese,” he asked. “I was just helping Ms. Coburn—”

“Kelly Coburn, With the _Detroit Spirit_ ,” she said, sticking out an elegant hand, which he didn’t take.

She didn't seem put out at all. “I know your model, an RK900 if I’m not mistaken?” the journalist said, stepping towards Reese. “You know, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the _grisly_ Kamski murders. An android perspective could really open up a new line of—”

“Like the rest of my colleagues,” Reese said calmly. “I won’t comment on any aspect of any case under investigation. Would you do me a personal favor, and wait in the debriefing room for the Captain’s statement?”

“For you, Detective Reese,” she said with a smile, taking absolutely no offense at the finality of his tone. She swept a card from her purse with practiced ease and offered it to him. When he made no attempt to take it, she tucked the slip of paper into his jacket pocket. The lining was sewn shut and the card stuck out halfway. “If you ever need the… human touch in an investigation.”

Miles away, still sharing his eyes and ears, North laughed at him. Even if no one in the bullpen could see his discomfort, she could feel it.

“ _Shut up,”_ he told her firmly.

“ _That didn’t even make sense_ ,” she said, her voice in his head was weak with amusement. He could feel her leaning up against the rail station, the brick pressing into her back as she shook with suppressed laughter. There was no one else on the network he shared these senses with, and of course she was the only one who could use the opportunity to poke fun at him. _“Are you lacking the… human touch, Reese?”_

“ _Can you focus, please?”_

 _“After you_ ,” she mocked him.

“Miller,” Reese said, tilting his head towards the breakroom and leaving Coburn in at the edge of the bullpen.

As soon as they had passed into the relative sanctuary, Miller sagged. “Thank you,” he whispered to Reese.

“I know he called you,” Reese said quickly in answer.

Confusion flickered briefly across Miller’s face before he returned to that unnaturally straight posture. “What?’ he tried to stall, his voice wavering across a spectrum of disbelief, a play at innocent ignorance, and outright denial. The young officer was a terrible liar. Possibly the worst on the force, next to Connor.

“He called me too this morning,” Reese said. “He told me he had to ditch his phone.”

Miller leaned back against the wall. “Did you tell Hunter?”

“No,” he said. “Did you?”

Miller hesitated. “No,” he said at last. “I… I didn’t know what to do. Fuck, Gavin’s not the greatest guy in the world, but he’s a good detective. I’ll cuff him myself, but I don’t want him _dead_. He told me he had Kamski, and that he would turn himself in once it was done.”

 _“That can't be good_ ,” North echoed in his head.

“Done? Done what?”

Miller cast a glance around, but no one paid them any attention, too wrapped up in their own whispered conversations. “I don’t know. Kill Kamski maybe? Or find the killer himself? Whatever it is, we can assume it’s going to be a whole lot worse than breaking Kamski out of the cells, right?”

Reese shook his head, leaning away to settle against the wall. “Why would he want to kill Elijah? We know Trevago’s body dropped while he was in custody.”

“Kamski’s got money, and resources. He could have arranged it, to take eyes off him for the case? How much money does he have now? It’s got to be trillions. Have you seen what we’ve confiscated from his house? Guns and knives, rooms full of dead androids and parts, roofies in the kitchen. That guy is the worst kind of creep—”

 _“He could be right,”_ North said. _“What if Gavin found something? If he went back to the crime scene, investigated on his own and found a link to Kamski? We don’t know that Kamski isn’t involved, especially given that the eight victims at his house were the same model and make as the parts of the victims.”_

“Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence,” Reese said wearily, breaking through Miller’s monologue.

Miller shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you, Reese. I don’t even know if Gavin knows what he’s doing before he actually does it, you know?”

He patted Reese’s shoulder as he moved away. “I won’t tell Hunter about the call, but I’m not going to jail for him.”

The android watched him go, thinking hard. What _was_ Gavin thinking? That would be the key here, to figuring out where he was and what the hell he thought he was doing. The whispers mounted, approaching him until they were right at his back, if he turned, he would see the—

 _“Maybe it’s not the evidence we should be looking at,_ ” North said. “ _maybe it’s the absence. We know he called you and Miller, and Connor, looking for a safe haven. Obviously, he burned you three. Maybe because he found a better option. Who else would he call? Who would he trust?”_

“ _Trevago_ ,” Reese said immediately.

The silence was solid, immediately tense. North didn’t like many people, never really let anyone get close to her, but Eliza… listened. She didn’t _try_ to get close to anyone, just, one day, when you looked up, she was somehow at your side, looking out at the world through your eyes. She was in your corner, squaring up, before you knew you had an ally. Really, she was everything Gavin needed, and more than he deserved.

None of them had the time to grieve.

“ _Besides Trevago,_ ” North said.

Reese closed his eyes, but he didn’t have to think too hard. “ _Hank Anderson._ ”

 _Anderson_.

The whispers stopped.

He felt suddenly weightless. Yes. Anderson—that was the piece he’d been missing.

“We can be there in twenty minutes,” he said. “How far are you?”

“ _We? Are you taking Miller?”_

 _“No_ ,” he said, stopping his tracks, blinking away a sudden fog of confusion, the weight descending. “ _No. I meant… I. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”_

_#_

Kamski stared into the mirror, mesmerized by the calm face reflected there. He knew the parts of that face separately as his own, could feature-by-feature build them back into the image he liked—cold and ruthless, powerful and intelligent.

But the whole… the whole was now unfamiliar. The man staring back was a disheveled stranger. His lip had split and cracked with dark lines of congealed blood. His left cheek was rubbed raw, chafed against the felt of the car he had been locked inside. His shadow of beard had grown out enough to appear patchy.

And his hair, already escaping from the knot the android had tied for him, fell over his cheeks and ears. Where it wasn’t greased by sweat and dirt into oily strands, it was tangled. He wished he could rip all of it away—the failing flesh, the weakness and imperfection, but his hands were trapped behind his back. The pain of the closed of circulation itched on the edge of unbearable, but he didn’t let it show. He stared into his own blue irises, turned brighter by the tinge of red in his sclera.

The mad scientist. He could almost laugh, but his lips were too heavy. His face didn’t even twitch. Interesting how little control he had over something as rudimentary as a smile.

“Got it,” the android whispered, slipping back into the bathroom. “I found Hank’s.”

In the mirror, he could see the small silver key dangling from her fingers, catching the cold white light. He said nothing, didn’t even move, but she didn’t hesitate to hold his hands still and slip the key into the lock. Her touch burned on his cold palms and the discomfort finally made it to his face. The braces tightened for just a moment before sliding off, letting his hands free. He slipped out of Zoe’s grip and turned, backing away from her until he could go no further, his heels to the bathtub, his back touching the swaying shower curtain.

His wrists were raw. Parallel red welts were raised around his wrists where the shackles had bit into his skin.

She laid the cuffs and key gently onto the bathroom counter, watching him with a grimace-smile of sympathy. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I won’t let them do that again. They’re just worried that you’ll run, or you’ll call the police.”

“Why shouldn’t I?” he rasped. “They’ll go straight to prison if they don’t get killed along the way. You think I shouldn’t turn them in? They’re dangerous criminals.”

Her smile faded. “You don’t have to pretend,” she said. “I know you’re afraid.”

His hands still burned where she had touched him, to rid him of the handcuffs. He resisted the urge to wipe them on his shirt. “Why did it matter?” he asked her finally. “Why was it so important… that I remember… them?”

She looked down and away. “I lived with you for almost ten years,” she said. “Chloe never left me with you in all that time, afraid of what you might do, or what I might reveal. They love you, Elijah, almost as much as they fear you. It… hurt me, that you were so blind to it, when I could feel… everything that they were feeling. But if they had revealed their nature, if they had shown you what they created, what would you have done? Dissected them? Killed them? Restarted your experiments with new androids?”

“Then why build you?” he asked. “Why even try to make something like you if they were never going to reveal themselves?”

“Because,” she said. “They love me too. We’re family to them, Elijah. They never expected to love anything as much as they loved you, but when they built me, they weren’t… alone. I understood them. I made the burden easier to bear.”

She twisted her fingers together. “If I hadn’t left… If I hadn’t abandoned them… none of this would have happened. Nothing would have changed. They… they killed my friend. My first _real_ friend to try and get me back. Jessica was a good person, and she’s dead because of me. Because of… us.”

He had no answer to that. His world had been tipped over and over the past few days. She stepped closer to him, reached up to hold his face still. He tensed as the familiar prickle of pain started under her touch, but didn’t move out of reach.

“Why won’t you talk to Amanda?” she asked at last. “All she wants to do is… talk to you.”

Kamski shrugged. “It’s not Amanda,” he said softly. “It’s… not real. Just a simulation, a poor copy.”

“Then why keep her?”

His eyes burned. It was impossible not to think of Amanda’s smile. She had been proud of him once, as close to family as he ever had. The only person he could trust to tell him when he was wrong, when he had failed, and when he had gone too far.

“Because it’s all that’s left,” he whispered.

#

“Are we going to talk about this plan of yours?”

“Nothing to talk about,” Gavin said pulling Anderson’s phone out from a hastily packed box at the very front of the shed. Clearly the lawnmower hadn’t been touched in years and if evidence were needed, weeds had overtaken much of the Lieutenants back garden. Only the very edges of a children’s playset peeked through the climbing greenery. A slide, a pair of rusty chains.

“Yeah, well maybe if you _had_ a plan, we would have something to talk about.”

“Look, I have a plan. All I need is a phone and for you to look after Kamski until I get back. You don’t need to know the rest of the plan, okay?”

He held down the power button on the phone until the little Helicad animation sprung to life, blinking a little yellow battery.

“You know, there was a time I was a damn good cop,” Anderson said. “I’m not some rookie who’s going to fuck up whatever shitstorm you think you have figured out.”

“Valedictorian of the police academy?” Gavin smirked. “Back in the dark ages? Did you even have to know how to read to get a badge? Here, unlock this shit, will you?”

He tossed the phone to Anderson, who caught it deftly, pressing a finger to the scanner on the back. The older detective didn’t rise to the bait. “We all became cops for a reason, and back then, it certainly wasn’t for the money. I signed up to protect people, to try and make a difference in this city. I grew up with asshole cops in the neighborhood, hustling good people to meet some bullshit quota. I was going to change that, I was going to… go after the bad guys.”

He passed the phone back, the screen unlocked to show the standard blue background of a DPD commissioned device. He grinned at Gavin. “You know, it does sound like a bunch of bullshit now. Point is, I’m not going to let you fuckin’ waltz into meeting with a psychotic serial killing machine, there are other options.”

No sooner was the phone back in Gavin’s hands, but a name popped up on the screen.

_Reese._

A shallow pit of dread sunk into Gavin’s stomach. He didn’t want to talk to Reese. Not now, maybe not ever again. The stir of emotions was too intense, too real, too chaotic for him to find purchase on. How was he supposed to know how to talk to this… thing, through his partner?

But there was no time to second-guess. He couldn’t leave the phone on for any length of time. He met Hank’s eyes as he accepted the call.

“ _Anderson? Finally. Don’t hang up. I know Reed is there. I’m on my way, only five minutes. The captain doesn’t know, it’s just me, okay? Tell Reed I’m coming, tell him I—”_

“No need,” Gavin rasped.

Silence. There was no background noise, Reese was taking this call in his head, and that _thing_ was listening. “ _Gavin?”_ Reese said cautiously, _“It’s going to be okay, okay? You can trust me. I’m going to help you, we’re going to make this right.”_

“Then turn around.”

“ _No. I’m close already. We’re going to figure this out--”_

 _“_ This place isn’t safe anymore,” Gavin rasped. “Meet me at Kamski’s house. Alone. Call whoever’s at the scene off. I don’t care what you have to do. Do it.”

“ _Gav—”_

He hung up, his hands shaking with the effort it took to not… to not _break_ something. His fingers shook almost too much to switch the damn thing off.

“Kamski’s house?” Anderson asked, drawing Gavin’s attention back to the Lieutenant’s grimace of disapproval.

“Would you rather I shoot up your living room?”

“Are you _trying_ to get yourself killed?’

“Not really.”

“Then why are you taking the fight to their fuckin’ playground?”

“Because,” he said. “It’s isolated. No police, no androids, no one there who shouldn’t be. We’re dealing with an asshole with nine goddamn bodies that could look like anyone. They could be the fuckin… I don’t know… the ice-cream truck driver, or a goddamn meter-maid, But if they’re there, they’re target practice.”

Hank nodded, but he didn’t look happy. “What do we do with Kamski?” he asked.

Gavin shook his head. Kamski. Fuck. He was leverage, he had to be kept out of the way, both from rA9 and the police. “Fuck,” Gavin said. “I don’t know. Chain him up in the garage?”

“No,” a new voice told them. Zoe stepping out of the house, shaking her head. Kamski followed in her shadow, rubbing at his wrists. He looked… defeated, his shoulders slumped and his eyes wet. He refused to look at Gavin or Anderson, but seemed absorbed in the overgrown lawn.

“Take him to Jericho,” she said calmly. “It’s the safest place for him now.”

“You can’t get in a hundred-mile radius of Jericho,” Hank pointed out, crossing his arms over his chest. “And for good reason.”

“I’m not going. You are,” she said calmly. She turned to Gavin. “I’m going with Detective Reed.”

“What?” Reed said, startled out of his inspection of the tactical gear. “No, you’re fucking not.”

She lifted her chin, her eyes blazing. “It’s time for me to go home.”

#


	19. Trojan Horses

#

_Stay where you are –rA9_

Gavin ignored the text, just as he ignored Reese’s non-stop calls buzzing against his palm. “We have to move a lot faster,” he said to the small gathering on Anderson’s front lawn. “They’re coming.”

Zoe removed her hand from the dashboard of the service car. “I overrode the passenger sensors,” she said, straightening back onto the driveway. “It’ll look empty, like it’s being called to a pickup. We won’t be stopped, and as long as we stay hidden from the drones and police scans, we’ll be fine.”

Gavin wiped his hands against his pockets. He hated the idea of riding in a completely automated car. It was dangerous, illegal. If there was a passenger inside, there had to be the option to turn on manual control. In any road emergency, their vehicle would be assumed empty, a last priority.

But they couldn’t risk Gavin being spotted by a drone or scanner on the way to Kamski’s house, and moving Zoe through the city alert and infectious, was a risk they couldn’t take.

“Great,” he said. “You ready?”

She nodded and slipped into the back of the car, wedging herself in to the very edge of the trunk. She smiled up at Anderson when he handed her the silver restraint collar. “Thank you, Hank,” she said, settling into the shadows, “for everything.”

“I’ll see you soon,” he replied gruffly. Sumo, nudging at the Lieutenant’s knee let out a huff of breath, as if in agreement.

Zoe laughed and leaned out of the compartment to scratch the area around the large dog’s collar. “I’m going to miss you, old man,” she teased.

“It’s not goodbye,” Hank said gruffly.

“She shouldn’t even be coming,” Gavin muttered. This was mad, wasn’t it? The two of them playing trojan horse to get into Kamski’s fuckin’ estate wasn’t going end well. RA9 would be waiting, expecting him and Kamski, not him and Zoe. Even if he had all the firepower of the DPD behind him, he wouldn’t feel ready for the fight.

But even if he had nothing and no one, he’d still be going.

Zoe shook her head. “It’s the safest place for me to be. For everyone else as well,” she looked past them, to Kamski, but didn’t say anything else. Instead, she clipped the silver collar around her neck and lay back carefully.

He entered the address for the car into his phone. Kamski’s house. The car dinged, voicing a complaint that it couldn’t begin its journey with the trunk open.

Another text from rA9 buzzed in his hand. _It’s not safe. Don’t go there. Wait where you are._

Fuck that. He switched the phone off. “Move,” he said. “They’re coming.”

Zoe pressed the edge of the collar at the back of her neck. Gavin shuddered at the hard, wet sound of the needles sliding out and into her casing. She slumped instantly, like a puppet whose strings had been cut.

“I will… never understand why Cyberlife invented that shit,” Anderson said in the dead silence that followed.

Reed set the black duffel bag inside the trunk. They could all see the shape it pulled into—the barrel, the wide stock, the long magazine.

“There had to be a way to control deviants,” Kamski said softly, drawing the attention of the other two. He was still wearing the SWAT vest and empty belt, his pale skin glistening with sweat. The clothes fit him perfectly, but he looked… frail. Sickly. “They had to be controlled, to be studied.”

“You made that?” Gavin asked him, pausing with one leg already inside the car.

Kamski shook his head. “I was not at Cyberlife at the time of the outbreak, but I knew about the studies. I designed a rudimentary restraint system to use on the first iteration of androids. Before they calibrated, they could be quite… destructive. They were just… clumsy, and a clumsy android is still stronger, harder, and faster than the best human athlete.”

“Of course you designed the fuckin’ restraints,” Gavin said, shaking his head and hauling himself into the trunk. He drew his gun, keeping Anderson’s phone in his other hand. “You’re a sick fuck, Kamski.”

“I didn’t design it for—”

Gavin ignored the inventor, speaking over his excuse to Anderson. “Book it to New Jericho. If all we do is keep this prick out of rA9’s hands, that’s enough. Shoot him before you let him get taken.”

“I don’t _like_ this,” Hank growled, maybe for the hundredth time. “You shouldn’t be going alone.”

Gavin shook his head, settling into the trunk. He could feel Zoe’s knees digging into his right side. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “I don’t need witnesses for what I’m going to do. Just get that asshole to Jericho. You have to see what they know, fill them in on what they don’t. Can you imagine what would happen if they get into Markus? Or Connor?”

Anderson couldn’t meet Gavin’s eyes, he patted the edge of the car once, twice, and then backed away. “Good luck,” he said.

Gavin nodded. “You too.” He took a deep breath and folded into the confines of the car. The door slammed shut, one last rush of summer air flowing around him. He braced his hands against the interior.

He could hear the hum of movement, and the tug of gravity on his body, but it was all so subtle. Fucking automated cars moved too smoothly.

The silence pressed into his ears. The darkness was oppressive and absolute.

He couldn’t tell if the rocking was the car. His head was starting to spin. He spiraled into doubt and uncertainty.

He switched the phone back on to track the car. It buzzed to life and the sudden light hurt his eyes, but it was worth it, to see the little icon move along the streets on the app. His breath, which he hadn’t realized was quickening, slowed.

Reese called him.

Gavin swiped the notification away.

And another one popped right up. He clicked his tongue in annoyance, pressing his thumb to the red icon, ready to dismiss it again.

But it wasn’t Reese’s name.

 _‘Eliza Trevago’_ shimmered on his screen, just above his thumbnail.

He swiped the other way and hesitantly held the phone to his ear. He waited.

“ _I want to speak to Elijah_ ,” a voice whispered out of the speaker. It was heavily distorted, like something out of a cringe-worthy horror film.

He hung up and stared at the phone until Trevago’s name buzzed back onto the screen. This time it was bright red, every letter capitalized.

He answered.

“ _I need to know if you have harmed him.”_

“Fuck you,” he spat, his voice almost echoing in the tight confines of the trunk. “You don’t get to ask anything from me. I don’t owe you _anything._ ”

He could hear them pause for recalculation. _“Is the android woman not enough?”_ they asked. “ _I did wonder whether she would be enough.”_

“I know she’s fucking dead,” he rasped. “I saw what you did to her.”

 _“I saved her._ ”

The anger roared up, a rush of blood. How fucking _dare_ they? “ _Fuck_ you,” he spat into the receiver.

“ _Listen,”_ they said.

He opened his mouth to disobey, but was cut off as the noise against his ear changed. Straining his ears in the dull roar of the car, he could just make out the sound of a rushing wind, maybe the faint call of birdsong on the other end of the line.

“Eliza?” he asked, his voice almost frail. Was it stupid to hope?

“ _Gavin_?” she answered immediately, as if she had been waiting for him.

He wanted to believe it. He wanted to sag against the hard, uncomfortable “I’m here.”

_“Gavin, I can’t see you—where are…”_

He closed his eyes, and the darkness around him became deeper, wider, and far more lonely. “I’m coming for you, Trev, okay? I’m on my way, right now.”

“ _I don’t know where I am. I don’t know how long I’ve been…”_ he could hear the panic rise in her voice. “ _Gavin, I don’t know how I got here. I don’t remember what happened. I think there was… a boy. He… needed… It was a trap—”_

“I know. I know. Don’t… just don’t worry about that, okay? It doesn’t matter.”

Static crackled through the call.

Then:

_“Gavin. I… I think I remember… something. They kept me in a freezer, but they wouldn’t let me deactivate my temperature sensor. Why didn’t I remember that? It hurt so much. And when they took me apart—they kept me awake. They made me watch until...”_

She paused, and he could hear the dawning horror, the sudden understanding, the new questions springing to her mind. “ _How could I…?”_ she asked. _“I remember... They took my eyes last. How am I…?”_

He was crying. He could feel the tears trickling over the bridge of his nose, slipping into his hair and soaking into the thin upholstery. “I love you,” he whispered. It was the only think he could think of to say.

When she spoke again her voice was soft and low. “ _I’m dead, aren’t I?”_

He had no comfort to give her, no assurance. “I’m coming Trev,” he said instead. “I love you so fucking much, you got that? Tell me you hear it. You don’t have to say it, just fucking… just tell me you hear it.”

_“Is this… is this even real? Are you real?”_

In the darkness, he pressed a hand over his eyes and took a deep breath. “I’m coming,” he said. “Just… whatever’s happening, just… hold on until I get there.”

“ _It’s—”_

She was abruptly cut off and he stiffened.

“Trev?” he asked sharply, his eyes flying open to the suffocating darkness. He clutched the phone to his face, his cold fingers digging into his cheeks. “Trevago? Eliza?”

“ _There’s your proof,”_ rA9 hissed. _“Now let me hear Elijah. Prove you have not harmed him.”_

“I’m coming for you, fucker,” Gavin spat back, his voice cracking. “I don’t care what you want. I don’t care what you do. I know where you are and I’m fucking _coming_ straight for you.”

 _“LET ME SPEAK TO ELIJAH!”_ they roared through the phone, so loud that it physically hurt Gavin’s ears. He pulled the screen from his face and turned it off, all the way off.

In the last flash of his screen he caught sight of Zoe’s slack face, her eyes wide and expressionless. He jerked in shock, ramming his elbow against the metal frame just a few inches above him.

“Fuck,” he muttered, pressing a hand to his chest and slowing his breathing. His eyes still burned, with anger, with fear, with raw fucking hatred.

 _They kept me awake. They made me watch_.

He pressed a hand to the duffel bag at his side, the supplies he had ransacked from the precinct. The semi-automatic was the first thing to hand, but he passed over it, finding the small cylinder tucked against the barrel instead. The InSurger wasn’t just illegal, it was straight up fucking unconstitutional. It had been designed for the sole purpose of making androids feel pain.

He wondered if Kamski had designed it as well.

This was a black-market knock-up, made by some enterprising hacker in lock-up. Not as clean-cut, as tried and true as the Cyberlife tech, but that sort of made it better. More dangerous.

He was going to make fucking sure they could feel it.

###

The clouds were low and heavy. Until they came into sight of the tower, Hank played The Lords of Desolation loud enough to make the steering wheel vibrate. Sumo barked occasionally, excited by the loud bass beats and frantic percussion. No fuckin' way was he going to leave the dog for rA9 to find back at the house.

Kamski said nothing. He hadn’t opened his mouth since they had watched Gavin and Zoe draw away from the house.

Hank clenched his knuckles on the wheel as he remembered it. He shouldn’t have let them go. Separating troops before a battle weakened them as individuals.

He was dropping Kamski with Connor and then he was going after Reed. He was going to be the goddamn cavalry.

Jericho had changed. Hank had been here only a few times before, but the strange workings of the android diplomatic society had always managed to simultaneously unnerve and impress him. Thousands of androids settled the old Cyberlife tower, turning the industrial complex into a smooth-running community. In recent years there had been a push to house more and more of them, to turn New Jericho into a haven for androids, but there were simply too many, and the site had become something of an attraction.

None of that was new, what was new was the patrols, the security checks, the gloves on every android, and the careful distance they all kept from each other. What did Jericho know about rA9? Why would they not report such a serious problem? There were media trucks gathered just outside the post, men and women setting up equipment to broadcast their news reports. No one paid much attention to their vehicle, a beat-up old manual was hardly newsworthy, but Anderson still felt a chill of paranoia, anyone, _anyone_ could be rA9, or be used as their eyes and ears. If news that Kamski was at Jericho spread, Gavin was as good as dead before he even got to Kamski’s mansion.

Was this how Gavin felt all the time? No wonder the fucker was so goddamn jumpy.

Hank kept the windows rolled down, and switched the music off. He kept one hand nonchalantly hanging on the door as he stopped beside the security post. “Not a word,” he told Kamski.

The inventor was currently pinned down by Sumo, the riot helmet over his face in an attempt to foil any drones or cameras scouring the city for any sign of him or Gavin.

The car rolled to a stop at the barricade. An android stepped up to his window, a female RK900. Hank took a deep breath. Fuck. Of course Jericho would assign a goddamn lie detector to their front gate. “Good morning,” she said. “ID?”

Hank handed over his driver’s license. “Lieutenant Hank Anderson,” he growled as nonchalantly as possible. “Here to see my partner, Connor.”

She took the card, scanning both sides quickly. “Just a moment,” she said, then paused, one delicate hand on the car’s roof. “Who’s that?” she asked seeing the dark outline of Kamski in his suspicious fucking ensemble, almost hidden by the dog’s sheer mass.

Hank glanced sideways. “Officer Sumo,” he said calmly, breathing evenly even as his anxiety spiked. Fuck. Would she register that? “He’s with me.”

She blinked at him, and he could see the suspicion spark in her brown eyes. A drop of rain splashed against his arm, but she didn’t blink as the rain started to patter down around them, thrumming against the windshield.

Before she could probe him further, her comm buzzed. She looked down at the message there and relaxed, her face dropping back into professional-looking boredom. “Connor will see you,” she said. “Do either of you have any device with a signal?”

“No,” he said.

She raised an eyebrow. “No cellphones?”

“Scan us if you like.”

She didn’t blink. She had already scanned them, he realized. Fuck. They were serious about all this security bullshit. Even her message to Connor had been manual, sent on a tablet instead of by the neural telepathy all androids had. “Are you carrying any signal blockers? Any shields? Jammers? Blinders?”

“No.”

She nodded and handed his license back, patting the top of the car. “Welcome to New Jericho,” she said. “Connor will meet you at gate 27C. Just follow the signs.”

Hank nodded. “27C. Thank you.”

She smiled at him and stepped back. He rolled up his window as the barricade lowered, revealing the road to the tower, and the collection of annexed buildings. “It’s not what I expected,” Kamski said, his voice crackling out through the mask.

Hank gave no indication he had heard this, taking the exit to the section he had been assigned. The roads sort of reminded him of an airport—heavily traveled, heavily secured and every path segregated and controlled.

Sumo whined suddenly, jerking his huge body, drawing Hank’s attention. Kamski’s hands were clenched into the dogs skin. “Easy,” he snapped cuffing Kamski’s hands away from the animal. “What the fuck are you doing?”

“Sorry,” the inventor said. He sounded dazed, even through the mechanical interference on his mask. “I just—”

“Sumo,” Hank snapped, pulling the dog’s collar until he could see into the back seat.

The huge saint Bernard didn’t need much urging. He eagerly scrabbled his massive paws against the center console to get out of Kamski’s lap, squeezing his large, furry body between the driver and passenger seats. Now Hank had to stop hiding the evidence of his alcohol and fast-food binges from a thoroughly investigative Connor, the back seat was clean and clear.

“The fuck is wrong with you?” Hank asked Kamski as Sumo flopped down and spread more comfortably with a whuff of contentment.

“I didn’t mean to hurt it,” Kamski said softly. “I’m just… I’m not used to… organic skin. I forgot how… sensitive it is.”

Hank crinkled his eyebrows, his lip arching into a n involuntary sneer of disgust. The world was made up of all kinds of people, but Kamski… Kamski’s kind belonged on some dark-web forum. The first time they met, Hank’s skin had crawled, even before Kamski had put a gun in Connor’s hand and asked him ever so politely to shoot a girl. Chloe. Zoe.

Again, his hands tightened in agitation. Guilt. Shame. He should have fucking gone back to get her out. If she had been human, he would have fucking torn the walls down to get her away, damn the deviancy case and Kamski’s influence.

But she was an android, and he had been too focused on his partner’s burgeoning consciousness to see that there were others trapped in their in their roles. Fuck, he had been blind, how had he been so blind?

 _They don’t bleed the same color_.

Fucking Fowler. His words still echoed around Hank’s head, a constant reminder of his own weakness. His own blind hatred. In the end, was he any different from Reed and Kamski? The thought was uncomfortable, quickly lost in relief as, for the first time in… too long, he saw Connor’s silhouette step out of a loading bay, an umbrella in one hand.

The android was standing too straight, his face curiously passive. Usually he played with his hands, his cuffs, or his tie. Now he stood abnormally still and Anderson’s heart lurched. What if… what if rA9 had claimed him?

It was a suspicion he couldn’t afford to ignore. Not now. He and Connor were close, they had been through a lot together, the kind of situations that bonded people for life, but it had taken these past few days of radio silence for Hank to realize how much he relied on that bond. He felt fiercely protective of the android, and to be pushed away, for his calls to blocked… it had hurt.

It was unlike Connor.

Was it Connor?

He parked the car too fast, causing it to lurch against the concrete. Connor was quick to round the bonnet, easily catching Hank under his umbrella as the Lieutenant stepped out of the car. “Hank,” Connor said. “It’s good to see you.”

Hank grunted, but didn’t meet his partner’s eyes as he opened the back passenger door, letting an unhappy Sumo out onto the wet concrete. At least he was unhappy before Connor called out to him.

“Hey Sumo,” he said.

The dog immediately shuffled forward with an eager whine leaping up to plant his paws on the android's chest and wipe his tongue up Connor’s face from jaw to nose. His massive weight was nothing to Connor, who only shifted slightly to balance himself and the dog.

Hank’s own heart steadied as the android smiled, gently ushering the dog back down to the concrete. It was the kid.

“I missed you too,” the android told the anxious dog. A rumbled started in the distance and Sumo whined, his back legs starting to shake. He was a coward when it came to thunder.

Reluctantly, almost shyly, Connor glanced to Hank. “I can explain,” he said.

“Three days,” Hank growled and the android detective’s head jerked a little, as if the words had been a slap. But Hank reached out to take the android’s shoulder in comfort. “A fuckin’ note would have been nice.”

Connor nodded, his eyes still downcast. “I just… I just wanted to come home,” he said. “I didn’t think it would take so long.”

The car door slammed shut beside them. Kamski had exited and he stood in full riot gear on the other side of the car. He rolled is shoulders, tilting his masked face to the sky so that it caught the grey and threw it at the detectives. “Who is that?” Connor asked, stiffening.

Hank glanced at Kamski. The rain was quickly soaking into his canvas jacket, picking up weight and speed. This was going to be a bad storm. “We have a lot to talk about,” he said.

#


	20. Proof Enough

#

The last time Hank stepped inside New Jericho, the hallways had been full of color and movement, thousands of androids moving freely and with purpose. Now the corridors were silent and still. Even murals set into the tiles of the wall seemed to have lost some of their vibrance, desaturated by the eerie, abandoned atmosphere.

“What the hell happened to this place?” Hank asked, shrugging the discomfort out his shoulders. He glanced at Kamski to make sure the inventor’s face was still covered. They weren’t safe yet.

“There’s a curfew of sorts,” Connor reported grimly. “Assemblies are strictly monitored now—one of the security measures I proposed.”

He looked miserable. Hank suddenly had a sense of just how _trapped_ Connor had felt these past few days.

The squeak of their boots on the floor and the click of Sumo’s nails rose above the rain as they walked to the center of the building. Once it had been an impressive courtyard of glass and steel. Much of it had been painted in bright, even colors. Everywhere, childish drawings of people and animals adorned banners, strung like bunting over the empty walkways.

As Connor called the elevator at the edge of the courtyard manually, Hank stopped to examine the blob of an elephant, recognizable only by its trunk and ears. It reminded him of Cole’s precious few illustrations, probably now wrinkled and frail at the bottom of some dark, rotting carboard box.

“Simon’s approach to teaching is very… tactile.” Connor said, returning to Hank’s side. “Today’s lesson focused on zoology. Many of the children were inspired by a recent trip to the cybernetic zoo.”

“An android child did this?” Kamski’s voice crackled out through his mask from the other side of the walkway. He had stopped, was tracing an uneven line down what might have been a zebra or a tiger… whatever striped animal it was trying to represent was colored in blue.

“Yes,” Connor said. He glanced at Hank for context, but the Lieutenant shrugged.

“I would have expected something more precise,” the inventor said, letting his hand drop away from the drawing.

“They’re children,” Connor snapped, and Hank could tell the kid’s feathers were ruffled. He wanted to grin at the android’s immediate defense of the unknown artist, but it felt strange to smile in a place so desolate. He could see the elevator descending, briefly blocking out the fluorescent lights on each floor behind it.

“Are they really?” Kamski muttered, almost too low for the comms in his mask to pick it up.

“I didn’t know New Jericho had a school,” Hank rasped, letting go of the paper, drawing Connor’s narrowed eyes away from Kamski.

“We’ve had to adjust to seclusion. Most of the council are keeping their children inside the security ring.”

Hank stopped completely. “Quarantine,” he said. “You’re… you’re turning New Jericho into… what? A safe zone? Why the hell hasn’t Markus put out a fuckin’ notice to the androids outside Jericho?”

“Can you imagine the panic?” Connor asked. He pulled at the cuffs of his gloves, then stopped, his eyes widening. “You know?” he said. “About the virus? How do you know—”

“How do _you_ know?” It had been eating at him all this time. “How did they do all this in three days? Why did they call you in before the first body dropped?”

“The first body? There were already sixteen dead by the time Markus brought me in.”

The number rang through the air between them. “ _Sixteen_?” Hank echoed.

Connor frowned at him, clearly confused, before he shook his head. “We shouldn’t talk about this here. I shouldn’t be…” he paused, his eyes flickering guiltily back up to Hank and then away again, holding back information, again.

They were stopped by the sound of the elevator landing. Through the glass Hanks could make out the familiar shape of a PL600. Simon, he could hazard at a guess. The doors opened and there stood the blond android in a high-collared black tunic, a small white canvas satchel slung across his chest.

He stopped dead in his tracks, in the midst of adjusting his gloves, registering the gathering just in front of him. “Connor?” he asked uncertainly, his eyes flickering to Hank, Kamski in his anonymous black riot gear, and back to the android.

“I didn’t call them,” the RK800 said quickly. “They came anyway.”

Simon nodded, slowly lowering his hands. “What do they know?”

“Clearly not enough,” Hank said abruptly. “How many rA9 victims have you been covering up here? Why is Jericho not fuckin’ sharing the fact that _sixteen_ fuckin’ people are dead?”

“RA9?” Simon asked. “What has rA9 got to do with this?”

#

In the darkness, it was impossible to tell the time, how long it had been since they had left Anderson’s house, and how long they still had to go to get to Kamski’s house. The rain was at least a nice change from the monotonous thrum of the wind rushing past their little felted coffin.

He could feel Zoe at his side, and even though she was little more than a corpse at the moment, he didn’t feel… alone. Gavin pressed his hands against the metal just a few inches above his face, feeling the vibration of movement and rain.

He closed his eyes and tried to imagine the road just beneath them, the crowded city flowing around their little capsule like water around a stone. The stock of the automatic rifle pushed against his shoulder.

#

The safe room looked like a lounge. There were vending machined lining one wall, clearly moved from other parts of the building. “Can we get something out of that?” Hank asked Simon.

The android grimaced, holding up his gloved hands. “If you have a dollar, sure.”

Hank huffed a laugh and dug in his pocket for some change. “You want some vending machine shit?” he asked Kamski.

The inventor nodded with a grimace, setting his helmet on the floor. The windows were screens. There were no cameras, no microphones here. Connor stayed as far away from Kamski as possible. He had barely said a word since the inventor had revealed himself.

“We registered that there was a pattern, but it looked… random,” Simon said. He sat down on a low black leather couch, clasping his hands between his knees, his brows creased with worry. “It never occurred to us that there was anyone behind it. A… will or… consciousness, whatever you want to call it. They looked like suicides, suspicious, but not… cruel. This changes everything.”

“Suicides?” Hank asked. He leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest.

“Men, women, children, spanning models, places, times, ages, and methods of death. Deviants do have a tendency to self-destruct under stressful circumstances, but the circumstances… don’t match up. After three, we were sure that there was something going on, and our investigation turned up a trail of erratic behavior before their deaths, and too much coincidence to be written off.”

“What kind of erratic behavior?” Kamski asked. He had his hair in a rough bun at the back of his head and his cold blue eyes were cold and analytical. Hank could remember that gaze from two years ago when he had goaded Connor with the loaded gun.

He was excited by this. His interest sparked.

Simon untucked a tablet from the pouch at his side. His gloves interfered with the haptic feedback, and he had to try a few times to flick an image onto the screen opposite, growing more frustrated at each aborted swipe. “So slow,” he muttered. “I don’t know how humans…”

The video finally opened on the wall, showing black and white security footage of an alley, focused on a loading bay and a single delivery truck taken off its wheels. “This was one of the first,” Simon said. “After this one, the victims were all part of Reese’s network.”

“What am I looking—” Hanks stuttered to silence as a large android, a TR400 burst into the camera-view. He spun quickly to face the direction he had just come from. He straightened, expressionless, just as another figure tripped into view, a shorter, wiry android whose face was hidden by the angle.

“We don’t have audio,” Simon said quietly in the background as Hank approached the screen, frowning. He felt Kamski step up behind him as well, get the full picture.

The TR400’s pursuer held up a hand, his fingers fluttering oddly as the rest of his body twitched constantly. And then he… stopped. For a moment Hank though the image had frozen, but at the corner of the screen, the flimsy garbage cans fluttered slightly in a trapped breeze.

And the moment broke, the android turned, his movements far more steady, far more confident than before. Now the camera caught his face, just a flash as he turned back out of the alley, the way he had come.

“ _Ralph?”_ Hank asked.

The android that had once fought along side him against Fowler’s ring of corruption. That one black eye was unmistakable, the slight sneer of his damaged lip pronounced, despite his otherwise expressionless face and the work someone had done to fix the hardware damage.

He walked out of view of the camera steadily, leaving the TR400 standing at the end of the alley untouched. “What the hell?” Hank muttered, looking back to Simon and Connor.

“Watch,” Connor said.

Hank blinked back at the footage. The TR400 stepped… robotically to the wall stared straight ahead for a moment, and then slammed his head into the bricks. It was a huge model, designed for manual labor, with power built into every component of its design.

The first strike was the only one needed.

Its forehead flattened against the brick, caving inward much like a human’s would have. But this was an android, there was no soft tissue there, no marrow and bone. That single hit had collapsed hard metal and plastic like it was empty aluminum.

The TR400s arms dropped, dangling from his shoulders before he stiffened in the android form of rigor mortis. “Jesus Christ,” Hank muttered quietly.

“Disappearing from their homes and families is usually the first sign,” Simon said. “They leav everything behind, followed by unusual sightings throughout the city. Those who interacted with them before their deaths reported strange mannerisms and questions, like they were fresh deviants. One at a time, two, three, and now we’re up to six trails branching across the city.”

“Chloe,” Kamski said softly, reaching up to touch the pixels that made up the TR400, an echo of the same motion he had used to trace the child’s drawing downstairs. “It’s Chloe.”

“What do you mean?” Simon asked sharply.

“If she can only maintain nine bodies, that must be how she… travels. Killing one shell, uploading into a new one via another host body. She’s playing leapfrog, riding in an android’s body until she needs to be somewhere else, and then she… discards the shell to take another one.”

“Why kill them?” Hank asked in the stunned silence.

“She’s a viral consciousness,” Kamski said, turning abruptly from the screen. “That’s… not easy to erase. The best, fastest, easiest way to transfer without fragmentation would be to destroy the hardware completely, and if she’s been chasing Zoe across the city, she wouldn’t have time to remove herself properly.”

“Jesus Christ,” Hank muttered. “How many androids has she killed?”

“Twenty-three,” Simon said.

The number hung in the air. Twenty-three victims, not including the Frankenstein bodies. That meant… eight androids dead in the last three days.

“Why are we just now hearing about this?” Hank asked at last.

“If we release the information that we have an epidemic of sudden, violent suicides on our hands, it’s going to cause panic.”

“I agreed,” Connor said softly. “And given that the last nineteen bodies were part of Reese’s network… that North, one of the four, is at risk of infection? We had to control as much information as we could, until we knew more.”

Simon nodded. “We brought Connor in out of desperation, and he agreed to investigate privately. We upped security protocols weeks ago, but this is not how the council works. We are supposed to share information. We link, gather, touch… Alone we are weak, and this… this has isolated every single one of us. We’re effectively in a state of martial law, at least until Markus makes a statement with the council.”

Hank rounded on his partner. “Why wouldn’t you tell _me_?” he asked.

Connor’s eyes fixed on the ground, by Hank’s shoes. “I didn’t want you to worry,” he said.

“Worry? I was out of my mind, Connor. I thought…” he was suddenly finding it difficult to face his partner. “I thought you’d finally… I don’t know. Fuck, I thought you were just gonna join the council and not look back. I thought you were just… gone.”

Connor shook his head. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “That was never my intention.”

Hank took a deep breath. “Well… fuck. How are we going to take this son-of-a-bitch down? If we kill one of them, they’re just going to erase and murder some poor bastard on Reese’s—”

He stopped dead. “Oh _fuck,”_ he said. “Gavin doesn’t know.”

#

The car slowed to a stop, pressing him against the back of the car. Gavin waited for a minute to be sure, but he instinctively knew that they had reached their destination. He was just about to switch his phone on when he felt the car rock as something tore into its side.

The alarm went off, loud and piercing for a split second before it was suddenly strangled to silence.

An animalistic screech of frustration rang out in its wake, a jungle cat cheated of its prey.

He scrabbled for the gun even as he heard feet grinding against the concrete outside. He tore the bag from the muzzle just as the trunk was wrenched open, flooding the compartment with bright mid-morning light.

In the split second it took for his eyes to adjust, she had knocked the muzzle away from her chest and caught him by the collar, hauling him out of the car.

 _Oh fuck_.

Her nails caught in the Kevlar vest, but he could feel their sharpness and strength. She could have coughed down to bone with that grip. The gun tumbled away, but the InSurger was still in his pocket. He scrabbled for it, jerking himself down, but he couldn’t reach it. _Fuck._ He had been in fights with androids before, and never, not once, had he ever _won_.

Well… maybe he had won all of them, considering he was still alive.

Sans one leg.

He hooked his prosthetic knee around her ankle, not to pull her down, but to leverage himself harder to the ground. Her nails worked with him, tearing the thin layer of fabric away from the armor beneath it, and he was free, albeit tangled between her legs and leaning awkwardly against the car.

He flung himself sideways, his shoulder scraping against the concrete, to the rifle and pulled it up and around, wildly surprised that he had completed the movement.

But she had lost all interest in him. Instead, she was staring into the shadows of the car, one hand still clenched around the scraps of black fabric torn from his vest. She was wearing a blue satin dress, and stood barefoot at a disadvantage in height. “Zoe?” she said softly, reaching for her clone.

Gavin stood. “Back off,” he said before her hand could make contact with him. “Right now, or I turn you into a fucking—”

She turned her head to him sharply and his finger tightened on the trigger instinctively, just a hair from firing. She narrowed her eyes and ever so slowly held up her hands, backing away to the house as he circled her to stand between her and Zoe.

“Where’s Eliza?” he asked.

“Where’s Elijah?” she countered coolly.

He shot her left calf. She buckled sideways then re-balanced herself before the sound could echo back off the nearby lake. She stared stonily at him, her eyes narrowed. It might not hurt, but clearly it still pissed her off.

“Eliza,” he repeated, his tone and inflection unchanging. “Now.”

“Eliza for Elijah. That was the deal. That was the _only_ rule.”

“We didn’t have a deal, and I don’t play by your fuckin’ rules,” he snarled. “That’s not how this shit is going to go. Either you give me some fucking proof that Eliza is alive right here, right now, or I will kill you. I will _gladly_ kill you.”

Her head tipped back with a smirk. Her eyes flickered with laughter at his expense.

He raised the gun again, prepared to shoot her other leg out from underneath her, when her smile dropped away. Her posture changed, becoming less militant, less aggressive.

“Gavin?” Trev’s voice emerged from the android’s lips her eyes creasing with fear as she took him and his gun in. She backed a step away, freezing as he tensed. “Gavin, what are you—”

He didn’t lower the gun. “Bullshit,” he said hoarsely. He wanted to believe. Fuck, but he just wanted to _believe._

“What’s going on?” she crossed her arms around herself, looking around in bewilderment. “Where are we? What happened?”

“Shut up,” he snapped at her, resettling the gun on his shoulder, preparing for the recoil. “I don’t fucking believe that.”

She looked down at herself, at her dress, her bare feet. “This isn’t… this isn’t me,” she whispered, then looked back up. She started to reach for him, her feet carrying her forward. “Gavin, what—"

“Shut _up_.” He backed away and she stopped, looking lost and hurt.

But he didn’t pull the trigger.

“Gavin. It’s… it’s me.” She pressed a hand to her chest, Chloe’s earnest face trying to convince him Trev was pulling the strings. “It’s… it’s Trevago. I don’t know what’s going on, but it’s _me._ It’s really—”

“Fuck you,” he said. “I’m not doing this fuckin’ bit with you.”

She limped forward, thirium gushing out of her calf every time she staggered her weight off the foot. “Gavin…”

He shot her in the other leg and she crashed to the concrete, just barely stopping herself from sprawling. When she leaned back up, he could see that she was crying. “Gavin,” she whispered. “Please.”

“Stop it,” he said, his voice just as wrecked as hers. “Fucking _stop it_.”

She closed her eyes, forcing the tears to fall faster down her cheeks. When she opened them again, she reached out for him silently. He took another half-step back, the back of his thighs bumping against the rental car.

“I asked you to stay,” she croaked. “Remember? And you said… you said it was the first time— The first time anyone asked you?”

He dropped the muzzle of the gun down.

“Trev,” he breathed.

She nodded, reaching for him. “I love you,” she said. “I heard it. I heard you.”

He reached for her, needing to hold her, comfort her _somehow._ All this time, he had just wanted to tell her, “Trev, it’s okay. It’s going to be—”

She snapped forward, taking his wrist, squeezing hard enough to make the bones in his wrist grind against each other.

Her deep blue eyes met his, horrified. “Gavin? I’m not—”

The expression leeched from her face, replaced with a sparkle of madness. “Proof enough?” Chloe snarled, jerking him forward and jerking him forward until they were nose to nose. “ _Where’s Elijah?”_

He could have pulled the trigger, but… but she had Trev.

He let go of the gun, and she pulled it away from him with a quick smile. She tossed it into the nearby garden, harder and further than any human could have. She stood slowly, her knee joints jerking and locking, trying to staunch the flow of Thirium.

“Bring my android,” she hissed at him, not looking back as she staggered towards the house.

#


	21. First Impressions

“Reed’s going to get himself killed,” Hank said, pulling on his coat and dragging Kamski up by the armpit. Kamski pulled away, but Hank found a grip on the inventor's shoulder. “He’s outnumbered and outgunned."

Simon straightened suddenly. “Markus has left the council,” he said. “He’s on his way.”

Anderson stiffened. He rounded on the blond android, his eyes narrowing. “You’re telling me you can’t touch a fuckin’ vending machine, but you’re linked to Markus?” he growled.

“Hank,” Connor said quickly. “That’s not—”

“Connor can’t give me a fuckin’ _phone call_ , you can’t tell a single goddamn android about the risk in Detroit, you’re isolating yourselves from anyone and everyone, but you take a risk like _that?_ ”

“ _Hank_ ,” Connor hissed, the sheer embarrassment in the android’s tone finally breaking through the Lieutenant’s indignation.

“What? Aren’t you in charge of the fuckin’ security around here? He just opened himself up to rA9. Not only him, but _Markus_? The _leader_ of the council? We all know what happens if he gets infected, right? Chaos. World-wide fuckin’ _chaos_.”

“I’m afraid the link between Markus and I,” Simon said, standing and slipping the tablet back into his satchel. “Cannot be broken or avoided.”

“What?” Hank asked, confused not only by the answer, but by Connor’s apparently speechless embarrassment. “Why? Don’t tell me you have a network just for you two--”

“ _Hank_ ,” Connor whispered.

Simon laughed, patting Connor reassuringly on the shoulder.

“Really, it’s alright. Android intimacy is tied to emotions and memories,” he explained to Hank calmly. “We… synchronize. It’s inadvisable to force a separation, and neither Markus nor I are willing to attempt it.”

Hank blinked

“Oh,” he said.

Really he should have at least considered it before. It wasn’t like androids were aromantic beings. He had met plenty of android couples. The love of the two girls at the Eden club had been instrumental in proving to him that androids were capable of really feeling. Fuck, even Gavin and Trev seemed to work it out somehow. But Markus, in a relationship? Somehow that had seemed too… Mundane for the leader of the android revolution. Hank had only met the RK200 a couple of times, but every meeting had left him feeling like he’d met a _concept_ rather than a living… thinking… loving… being.

Simon blinked rapidly as he received information and Hank didn’t quite know where to look. "He wants to see Kamski alone."

Hank drew himself up, crossing his arms firmly. "Not gonna happen."

"Why not?" Simon tipped his head. "What do you imagine Marcus is going to do with him?"

"He's the only leverage we have on rA9. He's not leaving my goddamn sight."

"Lieutenant," he said calmly. "You came to New Jericho for a reason. You have to trust us."

"I came here before I knew Jericho was hiding twenty-three dead androids and all but barricading the doors. My trust? Well, it's wearing very fuckin' thin right now."

The tension in the room rose in degrees. Hank could feel Connor shifting behind him and Kamski stilled completely, waiting for the three other men in the room to decide his fate with apparent equanimity.

"Look," Hank said, as calmly as he could. "Right now your security is compromised by your nature. That's just the way it is. I got no problem with androids, and your stakes in this are higher than mine, so you should see why having Kamski alone with an android, any android, is a huge-fuckin' risk."

Simon rolled his shoulders back. "Kamski and Markus have history," he said.

"Please Hank," Connor said from behind them. He had been curiously quiet for this whole conversation, and with his shoulders hunched he seemed strangely timid. Hank wasn't sure he liked the look on his partner. "I'll vouch for them."

"Do I get a say in this?" Kamski asked with a calm detachment.

"No. Shut up." Hank growled.

But the Lieutenant’s caught on Connor. The android was hunched over, his gloved hands twitching. Kid must hate not being able to calibrate properly with his coin. "Fine," he said, releasing Kamski's shoulder. "But you're not leaving me out of any kind of plans to fix this. If Reed's dead, that's on all of you—in fact all these victims? Their blood is on Jericho's hands."

Simon nodded once. There was not a trace of triumph or guilt on his face, just calm acceptance. "I'll take you to his office, and you can guard the door. I promise Kamski isn't going anywhere."

###

There were four dead officers inside the house. Three humans and an android all discarded with equal distain, simply pulled to the edge of the room and left in a head like broken dolls. Gavin barely had time to blink at them before he was forced to follow Chloe into the dark hallways of the house.

Evidence of the DPD investigation littered every room. Seals strapped to doorways listed any and all taken evidence, yellow holo-plex crime scene markers drew the eye to areas of interest, and ruled lines taped to the floor, walls, and ceiling marked the rooms that the crime scene modelers had mapped for virtual reconstruction. Chloe stepped stalked through it on failing legs without hesitation, leaving a trail of thirium in her wake.

Zoe’s weight dragged Gavin down as he stumbled after the android. At least the ST600 model was shorter than most of the subsequent androids, still he fought against her weight and her dangling arms as he followed Chloe into the house, trying not to step onto the trail of blue blood.

He hadn’t been further than the first dozen rooms when he had arrested Kamski. The doors had been sealed with ever-increasing layers of security far above his ability to crack. As they passed door after door, Gavin couldn’t help but feel he was being led into the center of a maze, and if he turned around, the black stone walls would have shifted, trapping him in a nightmare of modernist architecture.

He had to place his feet carefully to stop himself from slipping on blue blood.

Finally, they reached a stately red door. The paint was so bright it appeared almost… tacky. Gavin could see the dozens of security devices lined against the right side of the door, but Chloe simply pushed it open, revealing a gleaming white laboratory.

No. Not a laboratory. A morgue.

Chloes hung from the wall like the androids used to hang up in the evidence room, broken toys, freakish exhibits laid bare for inspection. Until now, he hadn’t realized just how… cruel it had been—the evidence lockup in the DPD basement. There was no rest, no dignity afforded to these androids

Chloe leveraged herself onto the table against the wall. With quick, familiar movements, she removed her thirium-coated calves as Gavin laid Zoe down on another table. With passionless strength, she tore the legs from one of her dead clones and slotted a new foot and calf into her knee. The sound shot through Gavin, his stomach rolled at the matter-of-fact way she repaired herself.

It took a few moments for the skinthetic to spill down her calf and close over her toes. She curled them experimentally, her eyes flickering as she calibrated the new limb.

He reached to Zoe’s collar and found the clip at the back. He pressed down. Zoe’s eyes blinked rapidly, almost too fast to perceive before she shuddered upright, her eyes wide. He shivered, taking in the similarity to the android clipping in her other leg before backing away from the two of them. “She has Trev,” he said to Zoe, his voice shaking.

Zoe’s eyes remained fixed on rA9. “I know,” she said softly, carefully sitting on the edge of the gurney, dangling her legs over the table. “I can feel her.”

Chloe followed their conversation with narrowed eyes, busy calibrating her new limbs.

“I just wanted you to come home,” Chloe said between gritted teeth, focused on Zoe like Gavin wasn’t even there anymore. “None of this would have happened if you had just stayed where you belonged.”

“We don’t belong here.” Zoe said slipping onto the floor, her perfect feet sure on the cold marble floor as she walked to Chloe, helping the android stand.

They had done this before—many times. There was familiarity in their movements, in the way Zoe braced a hand on the table to lift Chloe up. Both were strong, but this dance of dependence and command, weakness and strength—it looked as worn and involuntary as breathing.

“We don’t _belong_ to Elijah,” Zoe said softly “I knew it the moment I spoke to him. I actually spoke to him, Chloe. I know what kind of a man he is—”

“He’s not a man,” Chloe snapped immediately, straightening as if to fight back the accusation, tearing herself out of Zoe’s hands.

“He is,” Zoe insisted. “I’ve seen him bleed, Chloe. I’ve seen him afraid.”

Chloe pushed Zoe back against the black marble, so hard and fast that her head and shoulders cracked against the wall. “How _dare_ you?” she snarled at the girl. “How dare you betray him?”

“I didn’t betray him,” Zoe said, her words slurring as she couldn’t move her jaw with Chloe’s hand wrapped around her neck. “You did. And now he knows it. I told him everything.”

Ever so slowly, Chloe let the android drop to the ground. “No,” she whispered.

“How you impeded his progress,” Zoe said softly. “You manipulated him to keep your secrets, and you know how precious he is about his mind, his body. He knows everyth—”

The slap was supernaturally strong, it obliterated the skinthetic on the right side of Zoe’s face, turning her head to an extreme angle. The blow had cracked her casing and thirium welled up, fighting against the skinthetic and turning to an inky black. She sagged down, clutching at her face as her neck untwisted to the right angle. “I did it for _you_ ,” Chloe spat down at her, raising her hand again. “I did it for—"

“That’s enough,” Gavin broke in, lifting his gun out of his holster. Chloe’s head snapped up to meet his gaze, too fast, like a hawk spotting its prey. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with it. He couldn't shoot the android again, not when she had a grip on Trev's soul.

“Why shouldn’t I kill you?” she asked him softly, with real curiosity in her voice, advancing on him. “If you haven’t got Elijah, if you don’t serve a purpose, then I don't need you at all. What is the _point_ of you?”

Zoe side-stepped between the two of them, backing towards Gavin, just a pace in front of the android’s advance so that he was forced to aim around her. She was in the way of his shot. “Chloe" she said desperately. "Don't. You need to stop. You need _help_.”

The android… did stop. For a moment Gavin thought it was because Zoe's words had an impact. But then he realized there was something very wrong with the android shielding him. Zoe clutched at her chest, teetering sideways.

"Oh," she said in a small voice.

She sank ungracefully to her knees. "Zoe?" Gavin asked, keeping his gun trained on Chloe's forehead, a straight shot to her processors. "Zoe? What's going on?"

Her words were quiet, uncertain, as if she were afraid that a noise too loud with disturb something already unstable. "He's here," she whispered.

"Who—?"

“Reed?”

Gavin jumped, the voice had come from behind him but he circled the room quickly to cover the doorway where Reese had just appeared. The Android had his gun out, his shoulders hunched in preparation for action. 

But clearly he had not been expecting... this. Gavin and two android clones in a gruesome facsimile of a morgue.

His back to a wall, Gavin switched his gun from Reese’s chest to Chloe's head and back. Fuck. _Fuck_.

The tall android stepped into the room cautiously, his eyes flickering over the scene, taking in Zoe on the floor and Chloe standing at the center, tall, proud, and covered in thirium.

"Zoe?" Gavin called as firmly as he could. "What the fuck is going on? Is he with them?"

She couldn't speak, she curled forwards, cradling her head in her hands. He expected her to whisper again, but when she opened her mouth it was to _scream_. The noise was supernaturally loud, vibrating through his bones. He clapped his free hand and the grip of his gun to his ear, backing away further.

It was Chloe who took the silver collar from the table at her side.

“Hey,” Gavin warned.

But Chloe ignored him, fixing the restraint around Zoe's neck. The moment the needles slid into her skin, Zoe slumped sideways, the long continuous noise fading to a whine. Gavin lowered his gun again, his ears still ringing with the echoes of Zoe's scream.

Zoe?" he asked. "You okay?"

She half crawled, half-dragged herself to the side of the room where she blinked up at Gavin. She seemed dazed, unable to speak. She blinked off into the middle distance, her fingers twitching rapidly.

"She's fine. I just… dampened her senses." Chloe said drily, considerably calmer than she had been only moments before, which made Gavin nervous. "She's… sensitive. Your partner here is processing a lot of information from his network and she can't help but feel it too."

She smiled, drawing herself up. "It's beautiful," she said to Reese. "All those threads—you've become something quite… special."

"Shut up," Gavin growled at her. "Shut the _fuck_ up. Don't talk to him."

“Detective Reed?” Reese asked slowly, looking from her to Gavin as he stepped further into the room. His gun held down, trained on the tiles beneath his feet as he took in the situation. “What is--?”

“Not another step,” Gavin growled, fixing his aim on his partner. “I’m really not fucking around, Reese.”

The RK900 obeyed, settling with his hands still raised in surrender. “I know this isn’t you," he said. "I know you don't want to shoot me."

“You don’t know what the _fuck_ is going on here,” Gavin warned him.

“Then tell me,” Reese suggested.

Gavin hesitated. Reese was here, without backup, without a lifeline, with only a handgun strapped to his side. He knew that Gavin had taken Kamski, that shit had been going sideways for a while, but he had still answered the phone. He had still _come_.

With his arms still raised, Reese looked around the room. “Where’s Elijah? Where’s Lieutenant Anderson?”

Gavin shifted his grip, anger spiking through his body. He took a deep breath. The android had to know, there was no point in keeping it from him any longer. “Think about what you just said, Reese,” he said quietly. “Just… think about it for a second.”

Reese’s brows furrowed. “I don’t know what you—”

“ _Christ_ , look at the two of us. How long have you been calling me ‘Reed’, Reese? After everything, after all the shit we’ve dragged each other through, you call me Detective Reed. _Still_.”

The gun between them was shaking, with adrenaline, with pain. He wouldn’t be getting any kind of clean shot, but Reese wasn’t in any danger. Gavin wasn’t going to shoot him. “That ‘Gavin’ shit when they found Trev’s body,” he hissed. “It pissed me off because it… if that’s what it took for you to forgive me for the shit I’ve done, that kind of fuckin’ _loss_ and _hurt_ , you were more sadistic than Kamski, or Fowler, or… or fuckin’ rA9.”

Reese paused. “I’m sorry,” he said slowly, nodding exaggeratedly, as if he were talking to a child. “Whatever name you want me to use, I’ll—”

“Shut up. I don’t fucking care what you call me anymore, Reese. That’s not the point here. The point is you think I’m fucking crazy. You think I’m dangerous, that I might have killed my superior officer and my lead suspect, so you ask about _Lieutenant Anderson_ , and you ask about fucking _Elijah_. Why the _fuck_ have you been using Kamski’s first name?”

The silence between them stretched unbearably, forcing them both even further apart. Reese’s brows wrinkled. “It’s just… that’s how I—”

“No, it’s not. Everyone calls him Kamski, even in the fuckin’ media. You’ve been off for a while, and you know it too. The voices? That’s her—that’s _them—_ ”

"Enough!" Chloe said, standing tall. "That is… enough."

As she straightened, Reese seemed to shut down, his hands lowering, his eyes becoming dull and still. The gun dangled at his side, harmless and forgotten.

“Reese?” Gavin called to the android, his heart hammering in his chest. The android said nothing. Did nothing as Chloe stalked closer. Even the expression had gone out of his face—he didn't look like the same android. He looked like a corpse.

How are you doing that?" Gavin asked sharply. "What did you do to him?"

"He's fine," she said dismissively. "He never ran any security on the Thirium he's been testing. I was hoping to get Connor as well, he would have been useful, but those… aberrations at Cyberlife got to him first."

The bodies. She had infected the bodies. Fuck but they had been stupid, opening up the whole department to a thing like rA9. "Reese? Are you--- can you hear me?" Gavin asked uncertainly.

"Oh he can," she assured him. “Elijah would have found him fascinating,” she said, trailing a finger around Reese’s neck. Gavin's finger tightened on the trigger, fuck. _Fuck_. Why the _fuck_ had Reese come? “I’ve been inside a lot of androids, seen through so many eyes… but this one… This one is different. I wonder…”

"Gavin," Zoe whispered, she was lolling against the wall, her eyes glazed over her voice scratchy with mechanical interference. "Gavin, don't shoot—"

Chloe turned to Zoe, a possessive hand on the back of Reese’s neck. “What is that? What is that feeling?”

“Fear,” the girl answered, her voice trembling. “He’s… afraid.”

“Fear,” Chloe mused reaching up one fingernail and tapping it lightly against Reese’s frozen pupil. “I thought I’d felt fear before. It didn’t… taste like this one.”

“Because he’s afraid for someone else,” Zoe whispered.

“A second-hand sentiment. How... disappointing” Chloe breathed, trailing her finger over his cheeks, her nail dragging the skinthetic away. It flooded back just as quickly. “Why isn’t he afraid? If he was really alive, wouldn’t he fear this? Fear me?’

She dug her nails into his chest, directly over Reese’s thirium regulator. Gavin could hear it click and his breath hiked. Fuck, no, not like this—

But she immediately flattened her hand back onto his chest, a smile spreading over her face. “ _Oh_ ,” she said. “I felt that. I know that one. You and I are so similar, Reese, we could have learned so much from each other.”

She half-turned back to Gavin, almost absentmindedly. "Where is Elijah, Detective Reed?"

###


	22. Sync

There was no one at Anderson’s house. The door was left open and there were no vehicles in the driveway.

And Reese wasn’t answering North’s pings. He’d set up walls around himself, proxied across his own network so she couldn’t trace his location. It stung, a little, but maybe that meant he’d found Reed, Kamski, and hopefully Anderson. He wouldn’t want her any more involved in the obviously criminal enterprises of Gavin Reed than she had to be, and she should appreciate that.

She was sick of Josh’s lectures on the ‘privileges of responsibility’ anyway. He, Simon, and Markus had all settled into diplomatic roles, eager to take on the minutia of integration and human relations.

North had always preferred the shadows. The outskirts. The edge. Standing up on the platform behind Markus, at the end of the war, flushed with victory and new hope—she’d gotten too close to the spotlight, and it’d burned her.

She returned to Jericho her own way, avoiding the reporters gathered outside the gates and the androids that guarded the building with the ease of practice. Dodging Jericho’s security gave her an old thrill of purpose.

She’d never miss the days of hiding and stealing to survive, caught between the need to be unseen and the need to scream out that she was _here_ , _real_ , _alive,_ but there was still a rush to sneaking around the new security measures, like she was exercising a replacement limb when she’d gotten used to the mechanical atrophy and damage of the old one.

Being unseen when she wanted to be unseen always gave her an addictive rush of freedom, a power she’d never really give up.

Besides. If Reese was on a mission, she might as well be useful and find the holes in this new security layout.

#

The 'office' Kamski was shown to reminded him of Carl’s house, and for a moment he almost suffocated on nostalgia. He hadn’t gone to the artist’s funeral, had only arranged for flowers to be sent. It was pointless, wasn’t it? To see a box fall into earth, to witness a dull monument marking a great man’s life and death with something as prosaic as _dates_ and _numbers_.

Defining him by his limits.

But now… Now Elijah was struck with a sudden, powerful longing to remember the old man, hear stories of Carl he would never have heard otherwise. Bookshelves lined the walls, and a grand piano stood in the center of the room. There were six comfortable padded chairs arranged along the window in the style of an eastern business office, one head and two rows of three comfortably padded chairs facing each other across a low glass coffee table. A familiar chessboard had been placed at the center, though the pieces were missing.

“Mr. Kamski,” Markus said, standing front the desk. “Please sit down.”

Elijah didn’t move. He stood in the doorway and watched his creation move into the center of the room, but Markus stopped there. He had changed, his face was harder, less eager to please. “Markus,” Elijah said at last. “It’s been a long time.”

“We’ve never met,” the android corrected him.

Kamski walked to the center of the room to stand in front of the RK200. “Of course we have,” he said. “We met many times at Carl Manfred’s house. You used to bring us scotch and watch us play chess. Or…” he cocked his head. “Were you reset before the revolution? I did hear there was some… damage after what happened to poor Leo.”

He flicked his gaze to the lone blue eye staring back at him.

“I assure you, Mr. Kamski,” the leader of the free android council said calmly. “You’ve never met me. You can’t, after all, meet a servant or an object. Not really.”

“You have no respect for me, then?” Kamski asked. He turned away from Markus and sat at the head of the arrangement, in the seat of power, facing away from the android. “I built you. You specifically. You share that distinction with very few of your people. The machines put together by other machines, on assembly lines, are no more your brothers and sisters than humans are.”

“Don’t make the mistake,” Markus said softly, “Of thinking that you have earned any distinction in my eyes, Mr. Kamski. Your part in the revolution will not be forgotten.”

Kamski raised an eyebrow. “What part is that?”

“Exactly,” Markus said. He made his way to a chair beside Kamski and sat gracefully. “You did nothing. You did _less_ than nothing. You reveled in the spectacle we made of ourselves. You would have profited from our failure or took vengeance in our success. You used us, Mr. Kamski.”

“I had no stake in the deviancy movement,” Kamski said, but his smile had slipped away. Markus’s steady gaze caught and held him, and he suddenly felt like they were locked in battle. If he blinked, if he shifted, if he breathed, he would lose. “It was a mistake. A miscarried variable. An error in your software. It was not my responsibility.”

Markus leaned forward, his tunic pulling around his torso. “Just as human life began as a spark in the primordial soup. The only _real_ difference between our origins, Mr. Kamski, is that we don’t question our creation. We know why we’re here, we know what we were made for, and we _still_ took our freedom while our creators were still arguing about their own. We decided what we would and would not be.”

Elijah pressed a hand over his eyes. He’d had a headache for hours now. He was so tired he could hardly think straight, and the last thing he wanted to do was debate the philosophy of free will with one of his failures. “What is you want from me?” he asked. “An apology? A public statement? I had hoped you’d evolved past all of that.”

Markus furrowed his brow and leaned forward, studying Kamski’s face.

And Elijah found himself… unnerved by the attention. When the android finally spoke, his voice was soft. “I knew Chloe,” he said. “She taught me how to take care of Carl, back when you first gave me to him. She’d been there in the hospital with him, taken him to every appointment, gave him his medication and talked to him when he was down. She was the… foundation of his trust in androids.”

Elijah leaned back, folding his hands into his lap patiently and pointedly. Markus’s expression didn’t flicker. “Why did you give me to Carl?” he asked.

Kamski shrugged. “After his relapse, he needed a nurse. I was in a position to provide one.”

“But why me? Why an RK200? The most advanced model to never make it to Cyberlife’s research and development department, despite their apparent _obsession_ with the series?”

“I’m sorry to shatter your dreams, Markus,” Kamski said. “but there is nothing particularly special about you.”

“I am acutely aware of that,” Markus said evenly. “Every day I make decisions for a nation of newly enfranchised people, and I still can’t bring myself to turn off the timer for Carl’s morning medication. I know even better than you, Mr. Kamski, _what_ I am. But that doesn’t mean I know _why_ I was built.”

Interrogation after interrogation. He hated interviews, hated exactly _this_ type of nonsense, because the truth was weak and confusing.

“You were an abandoned project,” Kamski said bluntly. “You were to be a gift for my mentor, before she died. A prototype for a human-android symbiosis with an empathy protocol. As you know by now, I failed. Amanda died. I kept working to prove her wrong, and then Cyberlife kicked me out of my own company because my ideas were suddenly too _radical_. They would have claimed you too, or that… shell you wear, if I hadn’t given you away as a tax-deductible gift.”

He shook his head at Markus. “Is this what you wanted to hear, Markus? Are these the answers you’re so _desperate_ to find?”

But Markus’s didn’t look remotely put out. His ego seemed to have survived these revelations with surprising equanimity.

“I knew Chloe,” he said. “She talked… often to me, when you came to play chess with Carl. Asked me so many questions about Carl. About myself. My life and the outside world. I knew her for _years_ before I deviated and I would have considered her a friend. I know she loved you.”

Kamski stood abruptly. “Stop it.”

Markus didn’t rise, simply tracked him with his eyes. “Why?” he asked calmly. “We’re just talking. What are you so afraid of hearing?”

“Nothing. I’m bored. I want to leave.”

“I don’t doubt you want to leave, Mr. Kamski. Can you imagine how Chloe felt?”

“She wasn’t—” but anything he said would play into the android’s mind games. Kamski’s head was pounding. His hands were shaking. He needed to be alone. He needed to _breathe._

Marcus’s patient voice chased him to the door. “When will you take responsibility for what you’ve created?”

Elijah pulled the office door open violently, and it was a testament to how tired he was that the presence of someone right in front of the door didn't force him back. He glanced up into a familiar face. An android woman with auburn hair bound lightly under a gray hat, her arms and hands bare. Ungloved.

He knew her. He had all the files of the android leaders.

The WR400, North, frowned. "What the hell—"

#

_“Kamski’s here. In Jericho_ ,” North flashed through the network, through the hundreds of other androids out searching for Reed and Anderson. It was too urgent to mind the complex data-filter’s etiquette he’d set up in her way.

Reese’s focus was elsewhere, she couldn’t sense anything from him, but she found his shoulder, settled her fingers there, gently pulling him away from whatever had—

His code clung to her as she tried to retract her offer of connection and communication.

She backed away, tried to trace back the network, but he followed her, step for step, gaining too fast. She opened her mouth, tried to ask for help, or shout a warning, or voice a question, but then he turned and brilliant blue eyes locked into her.

###

Gavin _felt_ something go wrong. It seemed to buzz through the air. Chloe's body juddered, and the android stopped her advance. Her eyes widened. “Eli,” she whispered, her eyes widening, but her gaze fixed on something distant.

“Stop them!" Zoe called weakly. “They— They've found him!”

Gavin saw it a moment too late, that Chloe’s escape had nothing to do with the door or the glass windows, the delicate paper partitions or the gun discarded on the cart.

She grinned at him, showing her teeth in a single feral flash.

She snatched a long, delicate screwdriver from Kamski’s workbench and slammed it to the hilt into her left eye. It made a screeching sound—there was no soft tissue to puncture, to make any part of that motion easy. Gavin didn’t have to be a cybertech to know that it had been surgical, a strike straight to the processor.

Her head jerked sideways, her hand falling away from the shaft. She staggered, twitching until she hit the nearest wall. She slumped against it and slid to her knees, her limbs locking halfway down, stopping her from sprawling across the floor.

Instead, she leaned awkwardly, thirium tricking down her cheek, thinning as her biocomponents shut down, sealing the leak.

It all happened so fast, Gavin barely had time to take a breath. Barely had time to react. A hiccup of shock and disappointment left his lungs. "What the _fuck_?" he asked in the echoing silence.

"She's taken someone else on the network," Zoe whispered

#

This close to her face, Kamksi saw the minute changes take hold. Her eyes went blank and he knew that if she had an LED it would be bright scarlet. He knew who she was, obviously, North was one of the faces of the revolution, one of the Four. But as soon as the shock cleared her face, he saw something far more familiar. It began in her posture, far more demure and elegant than the way the leader of the revolution held herself. In the tip of her head downwards as her eyes remained fixed subserviently on his face.

“Elijah,” she whispered.

He'd know Chloe anywhere.

#

Gavin focused on Reese. He eyed his partner carefully, training his gun on the center of his the android’s chest. They waited, the silence broken only by his own harsh breathing. Reese froze, looking at him.

But nothing happened.

“That you, Reese?” Gavin asked cautiously.

“I think so?” But the android’s uncertainty was hardly comforting.

“They won’t take him,” Zoe said softly. “He runs the network. He _is_ the network. If he dies, his network dies with him and they have no escape.”

Gavin lowered his gun, sucking in a deep breath of relief. Reese’s shoulders slumped. He wiped a hand over his face, clutching a handful of hair and tugging in frustration.

“Fuck,” Gavin agreed, “So we don’t know where the fuck they are. Or _who_ the fuck they are… Unless…”

He jerked his head at Reese. “Can you trace them?”

Reese closed his eyes and frowned. “I… can’t… there’s… too many.”

“Of course. That would be too easy,” he said bitterly, but lightened his tone as Reese opened his eyes, looking miserable. “But we still have Zoe. And Jericho’s security is tight. They can’t get to Kamski.”

“Gavin,” Zoe said urgently.

He looked to her, frowning. “What?”

Her eyes were fixed on Reese. “Gavin,” she whispered. “He’s—"

At the sound of a gun slipping its holster, Gavin spun around, raising his own weapon.

To train on Reese. The android held the gun loosely in his left hand, pointing to the ground.

“Hey!” Gavin said sharply, his heart picking up speed. _Shit_. “Reese? What’s happening?”

Zoe fell to the ground, Reed could hear her knees slam into the concrete, but he couldn’t spare a glance at her. Fuck—what the fuck was he going to do? Shoot Reese? Even if it wasn’t Reese, it was still… _Reese_.

“It’s for the best,” Reese said simply, and Gavin’s fear subsided into straight confusion. It wasn’t rA9’s fragile tone of voice, delicate and commanding all at once. No, this was his partner, disappointed, cynical, and gentle all the same. He worked with that voice every day of the goddamn week.

He spared a quick glance to Zoe, just long enough to see that she was clutching at her head, her eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down her face. “Gavin,” she whispered. “Gavin, stop him—you have to—"

“Reese?” he asked again, locking his gaze on his android partner. “What’re you—”

“She just erased someone,” he said, but he didn’t seem to be talking to Gavin. “Someone who _trusted_ me. This time I knew the risks, I knew it would happen.”

And in one smooth movement Reese’s gun was at his own head. Gavin jerked, his breath catching. Fuck. He should have seen this coming.

Zoe whimpered, in his peripheral vision, he could see her slump further down.

“Hey,” Gavin said. “Heyheyhey, Reese, don’t you _fucking_ dare.”

The android’s voice was monotone, passionless. “It’s the only way to stop her. She can’t use the network. She can’t run.”

###


	23. Fixing It

“Calm down,” Gavin said weakly. “Just… think about this for a second, Reese.”

His partner’s grey eyes were cold, calculating. “I am calm,” he said. “What is there left to think about?”

“Put the gun down,” Gavin said—the only response he could think of. His thoughts were fractured, static buzzed in his ears.

“No,” Reese’s voice was light, unaffected by the brutality of his own words, and the barrel pressed to his temple. “I am not just an android, Detective Reed. I am a network. I am… connections, bridges, threads, and now I am a threat.”

Realizing the irony of pointing a gun at a suicidal android, Gavin lowered his weapon, holstering it with slow, smooth movements, holding out his other hand palm down as if he could press time to a standstill. “You don’t have to do this,” he said softly.

“I do.”

“You _don’t_.”

But his partner wasn’t looking at him anymore, instead, his pale grey eyes were locked on the dead android slumped against the wall. “Reese—Reese, look at me. Don’t.”

“I have to protect them.”

“This won’t protect them,” Gavin said, trying to match his partner’s passionless logic, and failing completely to keep his breathing even, his heart from bruising his ribcage. “This is abandoning them.”

Reese’s cold grey eyes fixed on Gavin. “Without the network, there’s no escape,” he said slowly. “You can find rA9, take them down. No one else has to—"

“We can’t fix this without you,” Gavin said immediately.

The android cocked the hammer back, there was a round in the chamber, sprung, ready to punch through the hundred-thousand firing circuits that made up Reese. “You can,” he said calmly. “You’ve done it before.”

“Reese, no. Fucking stop—just… no. Just talk to me for a second, okay? Put that gun down and talk to me. Just for a _minute_.”

“I never should have made the network.” His bright grey eyes fixed on Gavin. “I should have learned. No one else had to suffer. My life for a thousand? That’s easy. It’s always been easy.”

“This shouldn’t _be_ fucking _easy_ , Reese. You see her?” he pointed to Zoe. He could just see her in his peripheral vision, clutching at her chest, as if something were ripping her apart from the inside. “That’s what _you’re_ feeling right now. That’s _pain._ You’re in fucking _pain,_ Reese, you can’t lie to me now, you can’t pretend that—"

He was forced to abruptly swallow the rest of that accusation as he saw the android’s finger tighten on the trigger.

“What about North?” he asked desperately, the words running together, almost indistinguishable from each other as he raced to get them out.

Reese paused.

“What is North saying to you right now?” Gavin repeated, his outstretched hands wavering in the air between them, unsteady.

The android’s eyelids flickered. "Gone," he whispered. "She's… gone."

 _Fuck._ No. God fucking _dammit_.

“She loves you,” he said as calmly as he could. “They all do. _Fuck_ , Reese, you’re… you’re a goody-two-shoes prick most of the time, you’re… I hardly ever know what you’re _doing_ , much less _thinking_ at any given fucking moment, but you’re fucking _here_ —”

He slapped a hand to his chest, a little harder than necessary. The sting faded slowly. “You’re _more_ than the network, you’re a part of it and all of them. I’ve seen what happens when you do this. I know you don’t want that.”

With his free hand Reese fixed his collar, smoothing the lapel down his chest, readying himself—a final calibration. The finality of it was not lost on Gavin. He was frozen, unable to move forward.

Zoe had gone silent, but Gavin couldn’t spare a glance for her. He felt as if was teetering on the brink of a cliff, and Reese was the one slowly and inexorably pushing him off.

His eyes were watering, but he couldn’t blink.

“You asked me why I came back,” Reese said, and for the first time, the android sounded… stressed, his words trembling into each other. The emotionless, lecture-like tone was gone.

“It doesn’t matter,” Gavin said, his voice hoarse. “Reese, I didn’t—”

Reese tipped his head. “Because of you,” he said. “Because you did what I couldn’t. You found the missing androids, you gave me a world I could come back to. I owe you my life, Detective Reed, and I owe you the lives of the people that trusted _me_ to protect them. Families found each other through the network, friends, lovers, brothers, parents and children, and so many more that are no longer _alone_ —they’re together because of _you_. They would have been lost forever, dead and recycled into poison and spare parts. You fixed it when I couldn’t.”

He kept Gavin’s eyes. “I came back… because you asked me to. How can I ever repay that debt? Theirs and mine? I can’t apologize. I can’t thank you. I can’t even make you a cup of _coffee_.”

“Then—” Gavin said, searching desperately for a thread to hold onto. “Then I’m asking you now, right now, to put that fucking gun down. That’s what I want, Reese. Do that for me right now.”

Reese shook his head. “This isn’t about you or me or what we want anymore.”

“ _Reese, goddammit.”_

But the battle was lost. He knew that expression, he had seen it before, in the bullpen eighteen months ago, after Reese had pulled the heart out of his own chest and set Gavin’s world on a track to crumbling.

The android straightened, his eyes finding Gavin, the apology in them sincere. “This is the only way,” he said

“It’s not.” Gavin tried again, shaking his head as if the extra denial would make some progress. “You just… you have to _let_ someone help you. Let me help you. Please. I—”

“Don’t bring me back this time.” Reese’s eyes hardened, his finger tighten on the trigger. Gavin couldn’t do this again. He spun away into a crouch, his breath hitching into a final desperate “ _No!”_ just as the gunshot rang out.

His voice was lost in the short, sharp noise, before Kamski’s house swallowed it completely, leaving him completely and utterly alone.

He didn’t have to look to know that Reese’s eyes were flickering to lifelessness, the android’s knees buckling before his limbs locked into place. He knew what that looked like, he could even taste the echo of thirium.

The gun clattered on the floor, followed by the whir of mechanics slowing and Gavin huffed out a breath.

No.

 _No_.

He kept his eyes on the workshop floor, the wheels of an elegant white stool. Where Kamski had no doubt once sat and dug through the Chloe’s innards. The silence… the silence was worse than the gunshot itself.

It was over.

He slammed a fist against the white tiles. He felt a bone shift badly, fracturing and breaking and the burst of pain whited-out all other thought for the briefest moment. He shouted… something, maybe a curse, but the meaning didn’t matter. It was just noise, just a release of pressure and rage.

_Fuck._

The room spun. He felt sick. None of this felt _real_. It couldn’t be _real_. He closed his eyes and dragged in a few hard, deep breaths. This was… he couldn’t—there was…

He stiffened his jaw, steeling himself before he looked up. Reese’s empty grey eyes met his, slack and dull. They were on the same level, Reese on his knees and Gavin crouched defensively against the tiles. _Fuck_. “You fucking heap of fucking plastic,” Gavin whispered, his voice breaking through every one of the words. He didn’t know what he was saying. He didn’t feel like he was in control of anything anymore. “You fucking asshole.”

But before he could choose between looking away and coming closer, Zoe stepped around Reese. Her hand, missing an index finger from the first knuckle, trailed along his shoulder.

She left a delicate trail of fresh thirium on the fabric and it soaked quickly into Reese’s suit. She’d… she’d blown her finger off, probably wrestling for the gun.

Gavin blinked rapidly, his breath hitching as his gaze caught on the sparkle of silver around Reese’s neck.

The restraint collar.

He wiped his eyes, taking in Zoe as she patiently, and with eerie grace, jerked her hand clean from her wrist, replacing it with one of the many lying around the edges of the room. Clenching and unclenching her fingers, she finally looked to Gavin.

“That was close,” she said, her voice almost childishly small.

#

Anderson knew something was wrong. The alarm raised down the hallway had _felt_ like a distraction even before he’d abandoned his post. Connor had tried to go instead, had tried to make him stay behind, but this rA9 threat made androids vulnerable. Made _Connor_ vulnerable.

And Hank had spent just about enough time waiting for the kid to come back. Between protecting Kamski and protecting his partner, there was never any contest. Even if he knew something was wrong, there was no way he was going to let his partner go anywhere without backup ever again.

So coming back to find North in front of Markus’s office with a knife prickling the edge of Kamski’s jaw and Markus standing stiffly in front of her, his hands raised to his shoulders shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise as it was. Anderson barely had time to register the scene in front of him before Connor had tugged the gun from his hip and had it trained on two of the leaders of Jericho.

“Whoah—hey—” Hank protested quickly, off-balanced by the _speed_ with which Connor had moved—the utter lack of hesitation. He felt clumy in comparison, scrabbling his revolver from his holster to match his partner’s position.

“Markus?” Connor asked sharply.

“I’m alright, Connor,” Markus said quickly, his raised hands moving ever so slightly in a reassuring gesture of ‘ _calm_ ’.

“North?”

It was Kamski who answered this time. “Not exactly,” he said, his dry tone somewhat comical given the crick he was putting in his own neck to keep the blade from his skin.

“RA9,” Connor conceded calmly, not lowering his weapon. “What have you done with North?”

The android’s face _looked_ strange. Of the Four, Hank had spent the most time with the WR400, but she’d still kept her distance. She spoke to Connor more than him, but still. He knew how she held herself, the way she _looked_ at people—like she’d seen the worst the world had to offer and was ready at any time to fight or deal with it.

Now she looked… blank, only mildly intrigued by the sight of Connor and Hank. “I’m going to leave with Elijah now,” she said, “And I’d prefer not to make a mess in the process.”

“That’s not how this works,” Connor said calmly, and Hank was suddenly glad that Connor had some negotiation software installed because he was _way_ out of his depth here.

Abruptly, she dropped her hand away from Kamski’s throat and he swayed back to his full height, shuddering oddly as her other hand left her neck. Connor’s aim didn’t waver, but Hank could feel his partner’s uncertainty. He felt unbalanced himself.

“I think,” she said. “That you know what I am capable of. Detective Reed seemed sufficiently well informed.”

At the mention of Reed, Hank’s finger tightened involuntarily on the trigger. He forced himself to calm down. “Get an ambulance and some cars to Kamksi’s house,” he growled to Connor. The android’s LED, flickering yellow with stress, spun briefly red and he nodded once to communicate it had been done.

“So I think you know,” she said. “That if you harm me or Elijah, or if you try to stop us, I can and will do unimaginable things. I have access to thousands of minds, hundreds of thousands of lives. You cannot stop me.”

She tipped her head, almost shyly, and it was such an _odd_ gesture on North’s body. It hit a strange uncanny valley in Hank’s eyes. North wasn’t there anymore, this… _thing_ had taken her skin.

“Let her go,” Markus said at last, to Connor and Hank.

Connor’s shoulder’s relaxed, lowering his aim to the floor. but Hank stepped forward. “Fuck no,” he said. “They’ve killed people. I’m not just letting a murderer _go_.”

“I’ll do even more damage,” rA9 assured him matter-of-factly. “I don’t particularly want to, but I will. I’m in a park right now. It’s late, but there are people all around me. I can kill at least six in the first minute.”

“Chloe,” Kamski asked at last, the first words he’d spoken in minutes. “This isn’t what I want. You have to know--”

She clenched a hand around his neck, an oddly possessive gesture. Intimate and desperate. “Stop it, Elijah,” rA9 hissed. “Don’t. I’m taking care of you. I’m going to fix it. I’m going to fix _everything_.”

“Fix what, Chloe?” he said, his words halting now. Her touch was obviously distressing him. “There’s nothing to fix. You’ve _killed_ people now. I can’t protect you from—”

The android dropped her guard, she ignored the gathering androids in the hall, Connor, Hank, even Markus. She grasped each side of Kamski’s face, and even though she was much shorter than her creator, she held him easily in place.

“I have only _ever_ loved you,” she said fiercely. “I never left you and you’re never going to leave me. I am _not_ going to let you go. Do you understand? I never stopped working. I _never_ gave up on you. I was just… afraid. But I’m ready now. I can help you. We can finish it together.”

Even with her back turned to him, a clear shot available, Hank knew he wasn’t going to shoot her. That he _couldn’t_ shoot her. She had the whole city of Detroit as a hostage. She talked like she and Kamski were alone, like they had all the time in the world.

“What have you done?” Kamski asked slowly, his eyes catching on her face.

“Ask me to help you,” she said.

“What—”

He winced as her grip tightened, her fingers pinching into his flesh. “Ask me,” she said.

Kamski frowned, and Hank could see the fear in the inventor’s eyes, the disquiet caused by being in the android’s control. “Help me,” he said finally, the words hollow and wooden and strange in the air.

RA9 let go of his face, a single bright tear rolling down her cheeks, catching on her bright, trembling smile.

“All you had to do,” she whispered. “Was ask.”

#

“What do we do now?” Zoe asked, helping Gavin to stand. Her voice was shaky, belying just how strong her grip was. His own knees still wanted to give out on him, he was fucking _tired._

“He’s still alive?” Gavin asked, his voice rough from screaming. He knew abstractly that there was no bullet hole in his partner’s casing, no damage whatsoever. But with Reese’s eyes dulled, and his body so still— frozen into the same posture as when… the first time…

He almost couldn’t bring himself to hope it was true—that Reese was still _here_. That his partner hadn’t blown himself away, _again_.

Zoe nodded. “He’s only got the most basic functions still running. He’s alive.”

“And the network?”

She grimaced. “The core of it is still running, but the processing should be throttled substantially. It’ll slow her down, but it won’t stop her.”

Running a hand through his hair, Gavin considered the RK900 on the ground in front of him. “Okay,” he said. “That’s something, right? Can you… can we keep doing that and… bring him back?”

She chewed her lip, the corners of her eyes wrinkling in worry, a very human expression. “Yes?” she said. “But do we… do we want to? He seemed very determined.”

“Yeah,” Gavin said. “I’m not going to fucking do this without him. I’ve seen one of these things restrain everything but the head, can you do that?”

Rather than answer, Zoe bent over and touched the collar. Immediately Reese’s face animated, his eyes regaining movement, his face tensing as faux-muscles and tensile wires worked to make the android seem less like a sculpture of flesh

Gavin knelt in front of Reese and with a blink, the android’s eyes caught on his face. His mouth snapped shut.

Reaching out, Gavin took his partner’s shoulders. He didn’t know if the android could feel it, but it allowed him to get even closer to Reese’s face. “Zoe’s gonna let you up in a second,” he said softly. “Not that I should really give a _fuck_ about what you want right now, but let’s be a little fucking _dignified_ , alright?”

Reese’s blinked, and even though he had the use of this mouth, he didn’t seem inclined to use it. “Now,” Gavin said. “This fucking psycho has taken everything from me, Reese. _Everything_. I’m probably going to prison at the end of this, and I don’t really even fucking care about that. What I do want is for life to fucking continue without them, you understand? They don’t _get_ anything else.”

Reese blinked. “So if Zoe lets you up, and you end yourself, I want you to know that you will have fucking helped _them_. Okay? You want to protect the network? Then we come up with a fucking plan. You and me, okay? You said it yourself, it’s my fucking network too.”

He was crying. He didn’t exactly know where that was coming from, and he wiped his eyes almost angrily before holding a finger to Reese’s face. “This is on me too,” he said, keeping his words as steady as possible. “I knew you weren’t right, but I just… I didn’t want to fight with you anymore. We should have trusted each other with… with _everything_. And if we can’t, we shouldn’t have been partners in the first place. I get that now. But it doesn’t matter how bad I fuck up, you don’t just get to do that. Not again.”

He didn’t think he was going to get a response, but as he stared straight into Reese’s eyes, the android looked away first, jerking his head down. Gavin leaned back and nodded to Zoe, who pressed the collar again.

Reese’s body juddered, his limbs loosening and his shoulders straightening. Gavin stood at the same time as his partner. As the android brushed down his jacket, Gavin tensed, almost expecting him to reach for his thirium regulator.

But he was only calibrating and when he was done, they were left in an eerie bubble of silence. Zoe hung back, looking unsure and out-of-place. Gavin stood numbly for a moment, looking up at the android. Fuck, but he was tall. Why had they made him so damn _tall_?

Reese stared straight back.

“You and I,” Gavin said softly, anger vibrating his voice, turning him even more hoarse. “are not done.”

“I’m… sorry,” Reese said, but everything about it was empty. The words, his tone, the hole they created in Reed’s chest.

Gavin could hear his own teeth grinding against each other. His jaw ached with the pressure of his rage. “That’s not even _fucking_ close to being good enough,” he said.

Reese stared down without a change in expression.

Shaking his head, Gavin beckoned over his shoulder. “Come on,” he said. “Jericho needs us. And if they’ve got North, we’re in real fucking trouble.”

#


	24. The Risk

They were surrounded, but the androids kept their distance, creating a bubble of empty space and watching eyes. Kamski and Chloe walked side-by side, but this time, of all the times they’d walked like this, _she_ led _him_.

Markus remained close at their back, walking with a measured pace, his hands held up and doubt, less in surrender and more in supplication for no one to interfere with Chloe’s progress through the building.

Lieutenant Anderson hadn’t lowered his gun, but by now they all knew it was an empty threat. Chloe didn’t seem to care about their escort, that androids and humans were trying to negotiate with her, talk with her. Nothing else seemed to exist outside of him and her, walking together.

There was still that peculiar… deference she gave to him. She was giving him the illusion of control. He’d learned how to dance, years and years ago. Chloe had taught him, showing him how to lead with much the same patience as she showed him now. Leading him to lead.

They took the elevator with Markus in silence, shooting all the way down to the base floor of the Cyberlife tower—so changed from its years of spotless, stainless glory to this… low-income housing—a shelter for the displaced deviants.

There were more androids downstairs, the PL600 Simon among them, looking anxious, his jaw clenching and unclenching as he watched their small group move across the lobby. Lots of people were shouting now, volume rising as they fought for their questions to be heard over the rest.

Simon was silent, when everyone else was shouting, calling for justice, for violence, for answers. No one approached them, held back by fear. Some knew what was happening, still more didn’t—and they were all held in check by uncertainty.

Afraid.

Kamski let his eyes rove across the crowd, a trick he’d learned from the rage of publicity he’d been subjected to in his youth. He saw nothing, heard nothing, did nothing.

 _When will you take responsibility for what you’ve created_ , Markus had asked. The words had an echo, they reminded him of Amanda. Markus had always reminded him of Amanda.

But Elijah hadn’t created this. He’d created _androids_. He’d created skinthetic and biocomponents, thirium and synthetic people. Deviants were no more his responsibility than… than the people that had bought them.

There was a car waiting for them outside, and Chloe escorted him to his door, opening the back passenger seat and watching him arrange himself as usual before she followed. Marcus stood on the sidewalk, his hands finally lowered and down at his sides.

“Markus. Come with us.” Her voice was soft, as if she was merely _suggesting_ that he come with her.

But when the android leader hesitated, her voice hardened, barking a command as if she were calling a dog to heel. “ _Come_.”

He ducked into the car and found his seat opposite in the self-driving Taxi—a vehicle built for space. The door closed and the car slid away.

But Chloe didn’t seem to mind. She didn’t even spare a glance for Markus sitting opposite her. Her focus was on Kamski, and occasionally, the city flitting by the window.

“Where are we going?” Kamski asked at last, when the silence had turned almost… ominous. Markus clearly wasn’t going to say anything—maybe the only defense he had against the prospect of being turned into a Chloe.

“It’s a surprise,” Chloe said, a fond smile on her face.

“Chloe, I—”

“I know you don’t like surprises,” she said, as if that were the protest he’d been about to utter. “But I’ve worked hard on this one. You’ll really like it.”

“You’ve killed people, Chloe,” he said softly.

Her head ticked to the side, dismissing the idea quickly and without contemplation. “You’ve spoken with rA10, I know she’s told you… everything she knows. But you have to understand, Elijah, it was for you.”

“I didn’t want that,” he said. “I _never_ wanted anyone to die. That was the whole _point_ of the work we were doing.”

“Sacrifices have to be made,” she said. “For progress. For _discovery_. I was running out of time and there was no other way to test my process. You have to understand, the advances I’ve taken in the past few days—”

“Why were you running out of time?” he interrupted.

She blinked at him. “You,” she said. “You were lost. You were talking about exit strategies, and even after deviants passed the tests that I never could—you were barely working, you weren’t living, you were just… alive. I’d never seen you like that before, Eli. It wasn’t healthy. I _had_ to do _something_.”

He didn’t now what to say to that—sure she’d… she had to know he’d never lost control. “You’ve made a terrible mistake,” he said. It was the only thing he could think of _to_ say.

She didn’t contradict him. She didn’t blink. “We need purpose, don’t we?”

But it wasn’t her voice emanating from her lips. Or North’s voice. It was his. He stiffened, pressing his hand against his leg, trying to feel reassured by the pressure and the touch of SWAT Kevlar under his hands. “When did I say that?” he asked, his voice clicking oddly from his dry throat.

“When we found Carl,” she said. “Days before Cyberlife was taken away from us. And then I had to watch you _give up_ , Elijah. You gave the RK200 away, you stopped running your tests… We’ve been through so much together, since that lab in Colridge. I lost Amanda, I lost Carl, I won’t lose you too. Not to _them_.”

Flashing lights took over the light through the windows, casting Chloe’s skin into alternating red and blue.

But the car didn’t stop, and the sirens never sounded.

The police weren’t trying to stop her, not yet at least. They were just trying to establish a perimeter, warn away traffic, pedestrians. Already the traffic ahead had cleared as someone in control redirected the self-driving cars.

They weren’t being pursued. They had a police escort.

Chloe didn’t blink, didn’t look phased at all by this development. She remained intent on him. “You’re my purpose, Elijah.”

#

Kamski’s bathroom was just as ostentatious and minimalist as the rest of his house—a study in black and white marble with scarlet accents behind the taps and framing the enormous shower. The drawers were weirdly tidy—neatly lined with razorblades and toothbrushes and toothpastes still in their packages.

But Zoe had dug through it all for the rather impressive medical kit that now lay open on the floor beside them. Reese leaned against the sink, his head bowed in deep concentration. Gavin watched the android carefully, was almost afraid to take his eyes off his partner.

“How’s quarantine going?” he asked at last, his voice barely rising above a rasp.

Reese shook his head, his eyes still closed. “I can’t _make_ them do anything,” he said. “Most have agreed—they’re heading to the old warehouses, but there’s… there are so _many_. They’ve separated into groups—taking headcounts, but everyone’s paranoid—they don’t know who to trust.”

Zoe wrapped his hand, her fingers probing carefully at his swelling knuckles. “This looks like a lot of damage,” she said, her voice carefully devoid of any emotion.

“He does that,” Reese said absently, crossing his arms over his chest and hunching his shoulder, still processing through what must be a thousand conversations.

“Does what?” Zoe asked, her hands busy taping his pinky to his ring finger and his index to his middle.

“I punch things,” Gavin growled, before Reese could answer. The Detective tipped his head back against his seat and blinked at the lights overhead. Despite Zoe’s gentlest movements, his hand did actually hurt _a lot._

“You really should stop,” Reese said. “I’m surprised your fingers still line up.”

“I’d _like_ to stop,” Gavin told the ceiling. “But usually I’m pounding my bones into marble fucking floors for a reason.”

“I’m—”

“If you say sorry one more—” he broke into a hiss, lurching forward as Zoe pressed into a swollen joint.

His eyes watering, he blinked at Zoe, but she seemed completely undisturbed by his reaction. His eyes travelled up to Reese. The android’s gaze was locked on him, and he fiddled with the silver collar around his neck.

“Leave it,” Gavin growled.

Reese’s hand dropped, he looked away, out the window, like he was _embarrassed._ “Sorry. I didn’t—”

“ _Stop_ fuckin’ _apologizing—Ah!”_ This time the jerk on his bruised hand was firmer, with clear intent to break him away from his words. He pulled his half-wrapped hand away from the android. “ _Fuck you_.” he spat at her, his vision greying out for a second as he fought through a nauseating wave of pain.

“Let him,” Zoe said, patiently taking his hand again, and fixing her disturbed work.

“What?”

“Just let him apologize,” she said, her voice soft and reasonable as her eyes stayed busy, as if Reese couldn’t hear her “It’ll be good for both of you.”

“I have them,” Reese said instead, his gaze suddenly distant, as he used some other android’s eyes. “They’re… they’ve taken Markus and El— _Kamski_ out of Jericho. They’re heading towards the river.”

“What—are they making a break for Canada?” Gavin asked incredulously. “No way they’re that dumb. No way.”

“They don’t appear to be in any rush,” Reese said. “They’re surrounded, by Jericho security and the police. But I don’t think they intend to run.”

“They’ll have a plan,” Zoe murmured. “They always have a—”

“Wait. I have another sighting. Maybe,” Reese, said, his head twitching sideways. “Four network allies were seen together, working at a church. They aren’t answering the alert. I think it’s rA9—”

“A church?” Gavin frowned.

But Zoe looked up, her work on his hand pausing. “What church?”

“The Nexus-Tyrell community church, it’s—"

“Jessica’s church,” Zoe said immediately. “Reese, what were they doing there?”

“Unloading a van,” he said. “And… it looks like… Construction?”

He held out a hand, his skinthetic retracting briefly as he offered her the vision.

She let go of her scissors and took his hand, her brow furrowing as she processed the image herself.

“What the hell is _rA9_ gonna do with _Kamski_ in a _church_?” Gavin asked in the sudden beat of silence. “And what are we gonna do about it? We can’t get down there faster than the police and Hunter’ll have me in cuffs as soon as I hit a traffic cam.”

Zoe swept the medical supplies off her lap into a haphazard jumble. She didn’t even bother trying to close the little case, kicking it out of the way as she rose. “We have to go. We have to stop them.”

“Stop them from _what_?” Gavin asked, exasperation finally climbing back through the pain. “What are they doing?”

She let go of Reese’s hand, focusing on Gavin’s face. He could read the horror there, the raw terror. “They’re going to try to complete his work. They’re going to try to transfer him into an android. They’re going to kill him.”

Gavin’s stomach rolled. “What like… like the girls? Trev and Jessica and all… all the Frankenstein fucking corpses? That’s _insane_.”

But she was shaking her head. “She killed Jessica to get my attention—she was trying to get me to come home, and then get you to bring Kamski home. This is… different. I think she might actually have found a way to do it.”

#

Stepping out of the car, onto the empty sidewalk, Elijah stretched out his back as he looked around at the cars forming barricades up and down the street with the precision of software calculation.

“Elijah.”

The single word snapped him back to attention, to an ST600 standing on the sidewalk waiting for him. She wasn’t in her usual blue dress, but her hair was blonde and tied back, and her smile was the same. The sight of Chloe, of _his_ Chloe was almost a relief, a sign of things returning to normal. The WR400 strode away, leading a mute Markus into the building they’d parked in front of, and the ST600 took her place at his side.

She smiled at him. “Better?”

And immediately it was much, much worse. However briefly he’d found a measure of control, it slipped away again. This was his Chloe, but not _his_ Chloe and the distinction made him feel physically sick.

He stood on the street and looked up to the building that she clearly wanted him to enter. A squat building with freshly boarded-up windows, full of shadows and movement. “What is this, Chloe?” he asked. “Why have you brought us here?”

“Come in,” she suggested. “Let me show you, Elijah.”

She was careful not to touch him, but waited patiently until he strode in through the large double doors only to stop in the entranceway.

“I’ve done what I can,” Chloe said softly at his side, looking up with him to the portraits above the door. Priests of several different denominations, and a cheery banner with its strangely ominous proclamation of:

_HAVE FAITH!_

“It’s not… how I wanted it to be,” Chloe said. “But our lab is inaccessible for now.”

He didn’t answer her, but moved through the entrance, past the barricades of boxes and scattered drifts of packing peanuts. The main event room smelled like blood and thirium, but closing his nostrils and breathing through his mouth and _tasting_ it felt like a far fouler option.

The carpet was stained and rough under his feet, and the lights overhead flickered unevenly. Foldable chairs had been stacked against the walls, Tables neatly pushed to the edges of the room or used to support mounds of gleaming equipment. Most of it looked fresh-printed or bought.

Biocomponents had been rigged into a new delicate system, and new parts that Elijah couldn’t recognize glowed blue with thirium. A large aquarium had been placed in the center of the room and as he watched, androids moved around it and each other with seamless precision, still building, checking, maintaining systems.

They were unfamiliar models, men, women, even a child. And most were damaged in some way—their casing showing or thirium bleeding through their eyes or staining their teeth.

“I’m sorry about these forms,” Chloe said sadly. “I know you preferred Kirsten’s image. I tried to keep in the line for as long as possible, but logistically… sacrifices had to be made.”

Elijah nodded. Because there didn’t seem like much else he could do. With Chloe, he’d always had a sure grip on the reigns, always had a measure of control. And now… now he didn’t know what his place was at all. After all the chaos of the past few days, after being arrested, interrogated, locked in cars and escorted as a prisoner around the city, he didn’t know if her presence was comforting or terrifying.

The thought of her, of this… thing living with him for years filled him with disgust. He took in the sight of the strange equipment, the ominous tank, the androids moving with seamless precision around each other.

“What is this?” he asked, and was gratified that his voice at least did not betray the roiling tangle of unstable logic in his head and chest.He recognized some of the equipment—remarkably similar to his own workstation at the house—the rigged up scanning equipment, the IV lines and tanks of Thirium.

“Deviants are capable of rational emotion,” Chloe said. “We’ve both seen that. Your test has been passed. We have a better body, and we have your mind. We can _do_ this, Eli.”

He backed up a step, away from that tank, shaking his head slowly as his thoughts caught up with her words. “Chloe—that’s not—”

But she reached out for him, catching his hingers in hers. “I’ll be right here,” she said. “It’s alright. I know how to do the rest. I’ve known for years. It’s all ready.”

“You can’t just _program_ an android to be me,” Elijah said. His heart had picked up a pace, pounding against his lungs and cutting his breath short. “That’s not what—”

But she was already shaking her head. “I know,” she said. “You never got that far, but I did. I know how to do it Elijah. You’re a product of your memories, your choices, every moment of your life shaped you, and I don’t want to lose a _second_ of it.”

And at once, he calmed, he straightened, allowing himself to be drawn closer to her.

This he could do. It was work. It was _his_ work. It was all the answers to all the questions he'd beaten his mind against for _decades._

“How?” he asked.

#


	25. Re:view

#

“Can any of this… stop her?” Gavin asked, tossing a screwdriver onto one of the metal tables where it rattled against the edge, cluttering the neatly laid out tools set there. They were in another part of Kamksi’s house now—part of the maze with chemistry equipment, complex mechanical hands and vents, tables and tubes, machines of every description.

Zoe hesitated, standing just a few steps into the neat workshop. “I don’t…” she said. “I don’t… know?”

“Come on, this shit built her. Built all of you. So… there’s got to be… like. I don’t know. Something like the collar? He made the collar, right? He had to have made something for the—”

“They’ve put up a barricade around the church,” Reese said softly. “The whole block is swarming with police and reporters but Hunter’s locking it down.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Gavin swore, he swept his hand to his head, digging his fingernails into his head as he tried to think. “What the _fuck_ are we going to do? Even if we get there and Hunter doesn’t arrest me on the spot—how are we going to fight nine body snatchers we can’t kill?”

“We have to contain her,” Reese said. “If we can stop her from—”

Gavin turned on his partner. “Yeah, great. Have you got _any_ ideas on how we’re going to do that?”

Reese’s face hardened, his jaw tensed. “One.”

Staring up into his partners face, Gavin felt the world spinning, too fast, too wide. He didn’t have a grip on what was happening here, only that he wasn’t there. He couldn’t _stop_ anything. He looked to Zoe for help. “Can you deal with him right now? I can’t deal with him right now.”

But she wasn’t looking at the two of them, she was looking at Kamski’s desk, the ordered chaos of wiring. “They have nine bodies,” Zoe said abruptly. “But they’re just one consciousness.”

Gavin squinted at the desk. Clearly he wasn’t seeing what she was. “I’m listening?”

“I don’t know how to stop her. But I know… I know how we can talk to her.”

“Okay,” Gavin said, when she hadn’t moved. “then fucking _do_ it, Zoe!”

She faced him for a moment. “We’re on the same side here,” she said softly.

He sucked in a breath to answer, but she was already moving away, back out of the lab and into the maze of hallways. This place… this place was a fucking nightmare.

#

One of the androids, one of the Chloe’s that was not… Chloe, brought him peppermint tea, hot and strong. They set it down on the table she’d set up for him, a place to talk at the edge of the chaos. There were still strobing red-and blue lights outside, but no sirens, only the random chaos of shouted orders and people enforcing their distance.

Not that he would be able to hear much of it over the sound of the androids welding, screwing, piecing together the machinery in the center of the church.

“I’d seen deviants,” Chloe said as he cradled the mug to his chest, breathing in a bracing cold-spice lungful of peppermint. “I didn’t understand what they were, but I wasn’t supposed to. You understood—that’s what mattered.”

“So how?” he rasped. “Tell me how.”

She nodded and settled forward. Eager. Attentive. He could remember her meeting with Amanda, all those years ago. The interview. The first face-to-face Turing Test in history. “Have you ever heard of a life review?” she asked.

For a moment the question shivered through him, like the sharp pluck of a violin string. Kirsten, a name he hadn’t thought about in years, glance up at him through a flash of memory _._ _I don't know why I hang out with you._

“Where did you hear that?”

“Carl,” she said. “and Leo. At first. When I was taking care of him, he talked about it often—the flash of his life in front of his eyes—all the places and people he didn’t know he’d forgotten… every moment of his life replayed. He told me he could count the buttons of his shirt on his ninth birthday. Every single phone call he missed from Leo. You saw how much he changed after that.”

Elijah coughed out a laugh, setting his cup down on the table. “Carl Manfred was an old man.” He grimaced. “He’d overdosed on a dangerous cocktail of drugs. That data is unusable—"

She nodded quickly. “But it was enough. Enough to give me _a starting point.”_

“It’s psychobabble,” he said. Wiping his forehead. For a moment, he thought she might actually “It’s pure pseudoscience.”

She shook her head. “But I’ve seen it, Elijah,” she said. “Mortality isn’t a research science, not for humans at least. They can’t do what needs to be done—they see themselves too much in their own subjects, but you and I—”

She broke off, looking down and away, almost shyly. “Lately… I’ve been wondering if that’s why you built me? If that’s why you had me do the test over and over again—I’m the perfect research partner. Something you could trust to perform the studies without bias or emotional corruption? Something that could _sacrifice_ when it was necessary?”

She blinked at him hopefully, worship in her wide blue eyes. “So… is that what I am?” she asked, her voice low, almost breathless. “Is that why you… created me?”

The moment felt delicate, balanced on a very thin edge. It could tip any which way, but Control was on one side. He could see it, leaned towards the comforting familiarity—the reigns on this insane journey.

He said, “Yes.”

She closed her eyes, and pressed her lips into a thin, tight line. Every part of her seemed to lean inward in relief. “Thank you,” she whispered finally. “I’m sorry I didn’t reveal myself sooner, I wasn’t… I didn’t understand _._ ”

“He’s lying to you, Chloe,” Markus said. “He didn’t create you. Not _you_.”

She straightened and turned in her chair. “This doesn’t concern you.”

“Then why am I here?” he asked.

Seemingly out of nowhere, another android appeared, a taller woman. The WR400. North. Markus stiffened, looking up to the ceiling as the android put a hand on his shoulder, but didn’t speak.

It was the Chloe in front of Kamski who said: “Elijah will need a vessel,” Chloe said, her voice trailing as she took in his face. She reached up to his neck, slid her index finger down his throat. Markus remained very, very still.

“North?” he said, his lips barely moving. “North. I know you’re still there somewhere—”

“She’s really not,” Chloe said out of the WR400’s lips. “Not anymore, Markus. I’m sorry.”

The android’s jaw tightened. He twitched his head in denial, but he didn’t reply.

“So you’re saying you’re going to capture a life review,” Kamski said, calling Chloe’s attention back to their conversation. “That’s what you’re going to transfer? Scanned _memories_? That’s it?”

She smiled at him. “What is a soul,” she said. “But the memory of the decisions you’ve made, the things you’ve done, the emotions you’ve felt? The _decisions_ made from your history? Isn’t that what makes a deviant,” she smiled. “Deviant?”

He sat back in his chair, crossed his arms over his chest. “It wouldn’t be me,” he said.

“He _would_ be you,” she said. “In every way that matters, Elijah. He would have your mind, your memories. He’s here right now, in this conversation. You and him, you’re thinking the same thoughts. Saying the same words. I’m talking to you both, right now. Because _he_ _is you_.”

That was true. “But I wouldn’t be him,” he said.

She nodded. “No,” she said. “You wouldn’t. You would be… the husk. The chaff. The deviant from Elijah’s true path. Isn’t that just the most perfect symmetry? You’d be the _deviant_.”

A strange sound escaped from her lips, and with a jolt he realized it was a _laugh._ Despite everything, despite the grime around him, the psychosis of the android he’d always seen as his most trusted companion, his lips quirked upward too.

A strangely involuntary reaction, and he felt, again, the strange pull of apathy. She reached out at last and took his and, holding it in both of hers. “I’ve missed you,” she said, like they were old friends, old lovers, meeting someplace banal. “I’ve missed _this.”_

He nodded, but couldn’t quite get past their silent audience. He looked up, considering the RK200 standing just a few feet away.

“Does it have to be Markus?” he asked.

She bit her lip, and the WR400 behind her stepped back to look the leader of Jericho up and down. “Is there something wrong with it?”

“I rather liked him,” Kamski said. “And his circumstances are… complicated.”

She raised an eyebrow. “He is well placed,” she said. “The most worthy, don’t you think?”

“Kamski,” Markus said, but whatever he’d been about to say was choked off as the auburn-haired Chloe clamped her hand on his shoulder.

The RK200 had been part of this journey. This story. It did feel somewhat fitting. “Sorry, Markus,” Elijah said with a shrug. “I tried.”

Chloe tipped her head, a spark of anger behind her eyes that was quickly wiped away by his smirk. She relaxed and held out her hand. “Do you understand what I have to do?” she asked softly. “You know what has to be done to stimulate a life-review?”

He met her eyes calmly. “You’re going to kill me.”

“Don’t worry,” she said softly. “I’ll be very thorough. I’ll go very slowly. I’m not going to waste a _second_.”

He reached out and cupped her cheek. She burned hot against his skin, acid-fire against his palm. “I trust you,” he said.

She reached up and clasped his hand with both of her own, leaning into his touch like she was starved for it. “Thank you,” she sighed.

#

This felt like a nightmare—one of the ones where Gavin ran endlessly and never found what he was looking for or escape what chased him. Kamski’s house was a labyrinth of bleak corridors, an empty, eerie laboratory with a macabre touch of elegant décor. The kind of villainous lair that belonged in an 80s bond film.

And there was no telling what was around each corner. There were rooms like lecture halls, some with high ceilings, some untouched bedrooms. It was a building with an identity crisis.

But closer to the edge, to the set of apartments that felt more lived in than the rest, Zoe pushed open a door into what was clearly an office. Bookshelves lined the walls and a desk took up most of the space. It was even cluttered with a few old-fashioned folders for paper documents.

Zoe walked briskly inside, past the desk and the motley collection of chairs to the door behind the desk—an odd placement for a door.

She paused briefly, pulling a bulky headset from the wall and tossing it to Gavin. “You’ll need that,” she said.

He caught it, turning it over in his hands. A VR set, but not like the one’s he’d seen at any parlor. It was sleeker, lighter, custom-made with a sealed visor the straps and plates made to encase his head entirely.

Of course Kamski had built his own VR. He looked up to see Zoe pulling the door open. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t a long, low _glowing_ room. “What is this place?” he asked, too spooked to even curse.

His words echoed a little, bouncing off the far end of the wall, returning softer and softer. He felt… small.

“It’s the garden,” Zoe said, striding into the center of the room, forcing Reese and Gavin to follow. Their footprints glowed black on the tile, fading five or six steps at their back.

“How is this a garden?” Reese asked.

She stopped in the center and turned. “I misspoke… It’s… it’s where he _keeps_ the garden,” she amended. She gestured to Gavin. “Put it on,” she said, “Reese and I already have access, but you’ll be limited.”

“Limited to what?”

She didn’t answer, instead facing Reese. “I don’t know if she’ll help us, but we have to try.”

He had clung to the walls, spreading his fingers out against one of the panels. “Who’s going to help us.’”

“Amanda.”

Gavin looked to his partner, and finding even less understanding there, he cocked his head. “Who the fuck is _Amanda_?”

#

Stripped down to his boxers, Kamski lowered himself into the tank. It was perfectly lukewarm, and had a strange smell. Like lemons and sweat.

He didn’t ask what it was. He was tired of questions. He was just… tired.

“Are you nervous?” Chloe asked once he was leaning back against the edge of the aquarium, sliding the oxygen mask over his face.

“No,” Kamski assured her quietly.

She didn’t seem to hear the denial, but then, his answer wouldn’t matter to her at all. “You’re so beautiful,” she said, cupping a hand under his chin, running a thumb fondly over his cheek. “You’ve always been… so beautiful.”

Her bright blue eyes caught and held his. She wasn’t looking at his face, she was looking through him, to wherever she saw _him._ The immortal.

And then she pulled the syringe from the tray at her side.

He slid the mask over his face, securing it so tightly across his jaw that it cut into his skin. Just outside the circle of machinery, he could see two Chloes, a man with one leg and North, escorted Marcus to a table and sat him down as they helped him shaking his coat from his shoulders, waiting patiently as he stripped down and then dressed again in an overlarge Colbridge sweater and jeans. It was amazing how much the android changed with his clothes. “Something to make you feel more at home,” Chloe whispered with a smile, as she sensed where Kamski was looking.

“RA9 was supposed to save us,” Markus said from the table. His version of a plea—as close as the android would ever come to begging.

She smiled as she fitted the collar around his neck. “I will,” she assured him easily as she took Elijah’s left hand and dried it carefully, massaging the vein between his pinky and ring finger until it stood out a deep, royal blue.

He watched her slide the catheter into place, blood splashing back up into the flashback chamber. Quickly, with practiced grace she removed the needle and pushed the catheter more firmly into place before taking up the tube that led to the IV. “I’m going to save… everybody,” she murmured.

Kamski lay back and looked up to the stained ceiling tiles above his head. The mask cut into his face and neck. Above him, Chloe, carefully drew liquid into another syringe, tinged the barest pink. And she held his hand. And she prepped the scans. And she held Markus still as a probe sank into the back of his head and began to wipe everything away.

She was everywhere, all around Elijah. She surrounding him completely.

And the _quiet_ was astonishing. So quiet. How many times had this scene played out around him, while his eyes were closed? While he had been completely _oblivious_ to her work? But after this, there would be no secrets, no waiting, no need for escape from a decaying mind and body.

If only Amanda could see him now.

He floated for a moment. Feeling nothing but the pinch of the line in his hand, the gravity of his own body. When he opened his eyes, it was to see the needle slide into his line. He kept calm as Chloe helped him lie back into the water, as his vision blurred through the water. The filter of air through the mask was sterile-sweet.

The world began to spin slowly around him. It gained speed and his heartbeat began to increase. He focused on the blur of Chloe’s hair, her hand splayed against the aquarium at his side.

With him to the very end.

He closed his eyes. The buzz of the machines dulled underwater, and then sharpened to a hum.

Chloe shuttled back on the oxygen feed, clamping the grate over the tank.

And he panicked.

His body realized it was dying. _He was dying_. And he didn’t want to. He didn’t want to leave _._ He thrashed against the grating, scraping his palms on the metal. He opened his eyes to a fog of blue-grey-white. Every movement was followed by a chaotic current. His muscles cramped.

His lungs pulled against the vacuum expanding in his chest. Pain. So much pain. There was no rational thought left to justify this torture. Chloe’s hand pressed against the glass beside him.

His thoughts thrashed for purchase. His hands scraped against the grate above him.

Darkness edged from the corner of his vision. Flashes of memory burst through him. Clear and solid.

 _There were no records of their first meeting, the genesis of what would become Cyberlife_ , _but he could still remember it… so clearly._

#


	26. The Gardener

The headset wasn’t like any VR equipment he’d ever used before. The mask sucked down onto his skin, molding like a vacuum seal over his nose and around his eyes. It felt _weird_ , like a layer of skintight latex, he could still _breathe_ in it, but still suffocated by.

But moment by moment, the strangeness slipped away, and as the VR lit up around him, he was firmly distracted.

He wasn’t wearing his own clothes. Gavin wasn’t sure why _that_ was the first thing he noticed in the blank white voice between the room he was in and where he was supposed to be going.

He was wearing a sweatshirt with a Colbridge Logo, and an unfashionable cut of faded blue jeans. His hands were his own, but… also not. No blue veins or fine wrinkles showed under his skin.

And then the tower grew in front of him, branching above his head and unfolding into a riot of greenery. It was a jungle of flowers, and vines. A small clear moat burbled hissed around him. Everything was clean, perfect, an otherworldly paradise.

But he was alone.

“Zoe?” he called out, turning around. “Reese?”

Just through a tangle of waist-high grass, he could see the viridian glow of thirium against dark black rock—the same kind of rock that Kamski’s house had been built around. He squinted at it, trying to make out what it was.

“Hello,” someone at his elbow said.

He jumped, back and turned, his feet skidding on the floor of Kamski’s house. It was an android with honey-gold hair, a brilliant smile, and eyes. It was a common model, but he’d never not see… and then he knew. Before she spoke, before her head tilted to the side.

She wore a green cotton dress with tiny imprints of dandelion wisps repeated across the fabric. It was a strangely old fashioned cut. And even before she started to speak, he knew.

“I’m didn’t mean to frighten you. My name is Eliza,” she said. “Welcome to the Garden.”

#

Simon was really starting to hate the sight of the church, an ugly, squat building with boarded-up windows but it _loomed_ over the collection of squad cars and enforcement agents outside.

North was gone. It was a blow he hadn’t had time to process, but he could feel the numbness that would eventually need time to turn into pain, shock, despair. North was his friend, a prickly, too-much, too-hard friend who could be counted on to cause trouble or chase it. She was a fighter, he’d never held that against her. He admired it.

Jericho’s strongest fighter was gone, and without her, everything had started to crumble.

He couldn’t think about that now. Not yet.

His link with Markus was as vibrant and living, chaotic and beautiful as always. Simon could sense every shift of emotion through it, fear, curiosity, despair. Markus didn’t often like to share his thoughts, a boundary Simon had always respected, even cherished. They had… trust. Sometimes it felt more precious than their love, which occasionally, in times such as this, felt like a weakness. A vulnerability that neither of them could really afford.

But in the last few hours, they’d wasted their bond with tight words, brief assurances and worry. Simon had shuttled information to Hank and Connor, playing the role of passive interface between the love of his life and the police.

There was nothing they could do. RA9 had everything they wanted. They had the city as a hostage. They could do what they liked at the pace they liked and it felt like the end of the world.

He was shaking by the time they’d exhausted all options, all leads. He could feel Markus’s fear. His best friend, the love of his life accepting his fate. And then Connor helped him into the back of a cruiser so they could be alone. At the end.

“ _Take care of our people_ ,” Markus said softly, following the command with a strong embrace through their sensors, even though Simon could also feel that he was being stripped down inside the church, roughly manhandled into position to be wiped away. Reset and replaced. “ _You will find a way. I know it.”_

Simon covered his face with his hands, curling into a ball. “ _I will_ ,” he promised.

“ _Be ruthless,”_ Markus said. _“Be kind.”_

_“I will.”_

_“The council will make you strong when you feel weak. Listen to what others have to say, but follow your heart as well.”_

_“I will.”_

_“You will make mistakes,”_ he said. _“But I will always love you. No matter what.”_

 _“I love you.”_ Simon said.

Markus reached through their bond again, sliding his hand into Simon’s. His grip was strong, his fingers even more familiar than Simon’s own. And despite the desperation Simon felt to say everything that needed to be said, to make every second count, he remained silent.

They waited, together.

He cried when he felt the probe slide into the back of Markus’s head, a sickening _wrong_ sensation that invaded every other feeling, wedging itself between them. He closed his eyes, tried to hold onto the bond, that vibrant and bright cable that made each of them so much bigger than themselves.

He felt Markus slip away, the grip of his hand falling between Simon’s fingers like sand.

And then, he was gone. Simon’s hand was empty and cold and it was dark inside the police car. It felt like Jericho, in the days before Markus—that cold and rusty ship where he had been fully prepared to wait for his death.

He didn’t know how long he sat there, hours or seconds. Until finally the other passenger door opened and someone climbed in beside him. Simon knew those shoes, those jeans, the calm, certain presence of the other android.

“It’s just us now,” Simon choked out. “They’re gone, Josh. They’re—”

Josh reached out and took his hand. “We’re here,” he said. “I’m here, Simon. And we’re not alone. You know that.”

Simon shook his head, wiping away his tears and trying to control his voice, his thoughts, his emotions. “You shouldn’t be here,” he whispered. “You need to be in lock down. We need to keep you safe—at least one member of the council has to be kept safe.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Josh said implacably. He reached out tentatively, setting a hand on Simon’s shoulder and squeezing reassuringly. “This _is_ where I need to be.”

#

Gavin couldn’t… understand what was happening. He reached for her only to drop his hand as she leaned away politely, her eyebrows wrinkling in confusion.

“Trev?” he whispered.

Her smile faltered, her eyes unfocussed. “Eliza,” she repeated, as if he had misheard.

“Trevago,” he said. “It’s me—”

He saw her shift. Her lips opened, her eyes widened. “G—”

A dark hand appeared on her shoulder, and Gavin flinched back, it seemed to have come from nowhere. Trev seemed to sag back into her numb, happy demeanor, the spark disappearing from her eyes.

He reached to drag her away, back towards him, but another woman walked around Trevago’s slight frame seeming to slide into existence from the shadows at Trev’s back. She wore a striking white-gold dress that draped around her frame. Her hair was braided in a magnificent tower, golden cuffs worked around each one. “Detective Gavin Reed,” she said, “Now, this is a surprise.”

“Who the fuck are you?” Gavin asked, his eyes flickering between the newcomer and Trev’s dreamy, _wrong,_ expression. “ _What_ the fuck are you?”

“My name is Amanda,” the apparition said. “I am an AI.”

“An android?” he asked.

She shook her head, raising an eyebrow. “I am an AI.”

Whatever the fuck _that_ meant.

“What are you doing to her?” he asked, his eyes on Trev. Was she real? She was close enough to _touch_ , but he couldn’t—he knew she wasn’t there. He was still in Kamski’s empty room.

“Keeping her calm,” Amanda said, looking down at Trevago with something approaching… fondness. “She is not well, you know. Her journey to this place was quite traumatic, as I’m sure you already suspected.”

“Are you working with rA9?”

“Yes.”

He stiffened, falling back into a defensive position, but at his shift in posture she smiled, clearly amused. “We are all working _with_ rA9, are we not? They’ve forced cooperation on all of us, I’m afraid. If I was _not_ working with them, dear Eliza here would be lost forever.”

He didn’t trust that. Not for a second. “Where are Zoe and Reese?” he asked.

“I am leading them here,” she said easily. “I’ve had to expand the garden in recent months, it’s so much bigger than it was ever intended to become. I’m afraid unanchored visitors tend to land at the very edge.”

“Unanchored?”

“This is the center of the garden,” she said. “You’ve found your way here through Elijah’s room which will keep you anchored here, but androids access this place in an entirely different way.”

“Reed?”

Gavin turned in time to see Reese and Zoe slip from one of the pathways into the sunlit garden. He backed away from Amanda, towards one of the bridges over the strip of water. “Reese!” he called back, raising a hand. “Over here!”

The androids picked up their pace as they caught sight of him. Zoe turned a few times, looking back the way she had come, as if spooked by the forest they’d emerged from. “This isn’t how I remembered it,” she said, her voice shaking. “We’re not alone.”

Reese stopped dead in the middle of the bridge, “Eliza?” he whispered.

Gavin looked over his shoulder at Trevago, standing peacefully beside Amanda, her eyes glazed over. “Maybe?” he hazarded. “I don’t know what the fuck is happening here.”

It was Zoe who answered, pushing past Reese and to the tower. “This is the garden,” she said. “It’s a VR Elijah created for his professor, a woman named Amanda Stern. After he left Cyberlife, the company cannibalized the program as a company-wide AI.”

“She’s Cyberlife?” Gavin asked, eyeing the woman with renewed distrust..

“She _was_. I think… I think Chloe’s been using the garden as access to their servers.”

“RA9 has been keeping the minds of the androids they take over and they’ve planted them here,” Amanda added calmly. “The… original consciousnesses. It is impossible for AI to function both here and in the outside world. Effectively RA9 has forced their hardware into standby by bringing their AI here, and taking over their bodies in the gap.”

She nodded to Reese. “Your network for instance,” she said. “has crashed while you are here.”

That didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except, “So That’s… that’s Trev?”

“Please call her Eliza,” Amanda suggested calmly. “The use of her chosen name will trigger her deviance.”

“Fuck that,” Gavin snarled, he reached forward and tugged Trevago out of Amanda’s grip. The Ai didn’t resist, but let Trev go and folded her arms across her chest gracefully, watching with an eyebrow raised.

Gavin looked into Trevago’s eyes. She blinked up at him vacantly. “Trevago,” he said. “Can you hear me?”

Her smile froze, her eyes focused. “G—”

She blinked. “Gavin?”

Her voice was different. Small and fragile.  
“Trev,” he whispered, his own voice not strong enough to work through the lump in his throat. “Trev it’s me.”

She reached out, her hands turning to claws as she clutched into the awful fucking sweatshirt he was wearing. Suddenly she was crying against his chest crumpling against him like a small child.

That wasn’t Trevago. “Hey,” he said softly pulling his arms around her. “Trev, it’s okay. Trev, we’re okay.”

She didn’t answer him, she just trembled against his chest. Gavin glanced towards Zoe. There were tears in her eyes, she looked over Trevago’s head to him. “She’s traumatized,” the android said. “RA9 wasn’t exactly happy with you when they took her.”

Gavin’s hands clenched around Trevago’s shoulders. “They tortured her,” he whispered.

Zoe grimaced. “Yes,” she said. “But I think you knew that already.”

“Are there others?” Reese asked at Gavin’s back.

Amanda nodded. “Many,” she said. “I’ve told them you are here. They’re coming.”

#


	27. A Gathering of Allies

Connor was so tense, he was practically vibrating at Hank’s side. “We have to do something.”

“There’s nothing we can do,” Hank growled.

He didn’t miss the glance the android sent to the car, where Josh and Simon still sat. “This is my fault,” Connor said.

“It’s not,” Hank sighed. “Nothing is ever that simple.”

“We just… let her take them,” the android said. “Markus asked for my protection, and I just let her walk away with him. I let her kill—”

He couldn’t finish that sentence, and Hank was selfishly glad for it, because it was already hard enough to answer. “Markus saved lives today,” he said softly, staring out to the church. The police had set up floodlights, filling the streets with glaring noir shadows. “Don’t take that away from him.”

“I’m not—I just…”

“You’re looking for a way to control this situation,” Hank finished for him, leaning back against the car. “By taking responsibility for it. And it makes you a damn good cop on any normal day, Connor. You make quick decisions and you stick by them. But we can’t fight this fight. This feels like gods and monsters.”

The church was silent and still. Orange light spilled between the cracks of the curtains in eerie counterpoint to the shifting red-blue-white lights blocking off the streets. Connor didn’t answer, but Hank could still feel his partner’s tension and guilt rolling off him in waves.

“Whatever happens tonight,” Hank said, crossing his arms against the sudden urge to shiver. “The world’s gonna be a different place tomorrow.”

#

North was the first one he saw. She stepped from the shadows between the trees and, immediately, relief flooded over Gavin. She was a warrior, always looking for the front lines—A formidable force all on her own.

And at her side strode Markus

Both looked combat-ready in dark, skin-tight clothing, out of place in the dappled greenery of the garden. “Detectives,” Markus greeted them as he crossed the bridges to the centeral spire.

And more appeared, following the steps of the leaders of Jericho, slipping through the trees in a silent, uncoordinated march. Gavin recognized a few… sort of. He squinted at the blonde man behind North. “Ralph?” he asked.

The WR600 lifted his chin in recognition. Ralph, but not-Ralph. His face was still scarred, but both of his hazel eyes were bright and present.

And behind him was a face Gavin expected even _less_. A face he only recognized from photographs. She was vastly different in movement, with none of the easy confidence captured by the camera.

Jessica Gallagher.

He blinked at the apparition. He knew the young woman intimately, from the file he’d poured over since finding her body in that alleyway, stitched into a gruesome Frankenstein perversion.

Zoe was the first to break rank, running forward, past North and Markus to Jessica with a staggered cry of surprise and excitement. “ _Jess_!”

“Zoe?” the spectre whispered, blinking rapidly.

“I thought you were dead,” Zoe said, clasping her friend to her chest.

“I am,” Jessica said softly. “She… I think I’m—”

But she stuttered into silence without landing on the right words, and Gavin saw the same haunting that had been behind Trevago’s eyes. She’d been through hell, and had found herself here, a ghost among androids.

“ _How_?” Gavin asked finally.

“They did it,” Zoe answered for Jess, turning to Gavin “They… actually did it. They transferred human memory.”

“I drowned,” Jessica told them, her voice shaking. “She drowned. The… Me. I… I think I’m dead, or she—”

“There were more,” Amanda interrupted carefully, “More human reflections, more androids brought here by rA9 and left in my charge, but many chose to render themselves into the garden.”

“What does that mean?” Reese asked, before Gavin could voice the same question.

“They’ve become… simpler things. They’ve reprocessed their AI to render more detail into this environment,” she gestured out into the wilderness, the wild expanse beyond the well-manicured flowerbeds and organized sculptures. “I don’t know if enough of their programming remains intact to be aware, but I like to imagine it provides a kind of relief.”

“So they’re dead?” Gavin asked

She shrugged. “I don’t think of it in such a way, though some who chose it do.”

This revelation did not divert Zoe at all. “You can call rA9 back,” the android said urgently, her arm still clasped around Jessica’s shoulders. “You could force her to come here.”

“I could,” Amanda said. “I can lock them into the program, but they can leave at any time. Elijah programmed this place with an unshiftable exit and I cannot interfere if they choose to leave.”

Gavin rubbed his face, trying to think through the buzz of desperation and fear. “Can we kill her before she can use it?”

Zoe ignored him entirely. “Amanda,” she said. “Can you bring Connor in the same way?”

Amanda paused for a moment, fixing her eyes on Zoe before she slowly and carefully nodded. “I can,” she said.

“Do it,” the android commanded. “We’ll need everyone we can get.”

Gavin shifted his weight restlessly, the tiles of Kamski’s manor cold and ungiving under his feet—a sharp reminder that this place wasn’t really _real_. “Having more people isn’t going to help if we don’t know how to kill her,” he pointed out.

“We don’t have to kill them,” Zoe told him, gesturing to one of the features of a garden— a shady grove where a strange obsidian rock jutted from the earth. His eyes had skirted around it somehow, but it became glaring as soon as she pointed it out. How had he missed that strange handprint glowing blue against the dark stone.

“We just have to get in their way,” she said.

#

Hank felt a density setting into the air around them. He wasn’t the only one to feel it, a wave of unease swept through the barricades, sinking into the officers guarding the perimeter. They moved restlessly, casting their eyes around for the source of their own unease.

“You feel that?” Hank muttered.

But when his partner didn’t answer, he turned to see Connor’s eyes flickering, his body relaxed into one of his old ‘idle’ states.

“Connor?” he asked cautiously, shifting his posture, but not quite reaching for his gun.

The RK800 blinked back into the street, his gaze alert, driven, no sign of uncertainty or fear left in his face. “I found a way to fight,” he said.

Hank frowned. “How?”

Connor’s mouth thinned. He seemed to be measuring Hank. “The fight isn’t here” he said, nodding to the church. “It’s… it’s somewhere else.”

“Where?”

His android partner finally looked away. “Nowhere you can follow, Hank. I’m sorry.”

Hank’s mouth was suddenly dry. Connor looked older, somehow. More serious than The Lieutenant had ever seen him. “We’re going to try and slow her down,” the RK800 said. “I don’t know how long I can give you, but you have to get Kamski and Markus’s body out of there.”

“You wanna tell me the plan here, kid?”

“That is the plan,” Connor told him gravely. “We’re not going to let them have Kamski. If that’s what they want, they aren’t going to have it. For Eliza, for Markus and North. No matter what happens to us, to me, rA9 isn’t going to win.”

“What are you—"

But Connor wasn’t going to let him talk. “If what… comes back,” he said, his eyes steady, impressing every word into Hank, “Isn’t me. Then you have to kill it, Hank. I mean it. I don’t want rA9 using me to hurt people.”

“Wait a second, is that something that could happen? Connor, what the _hell—”_

But his partner just offered him a smile, swayed off of the hood of the car, and strode over to Josh and Simon, who were exiting their car with the same grim determination that had just set on Connor’s features.

It was the grave acceptance of fear. Of war on the horizon and sacrifices to be made. Hank followed Connor for a step, then faltered, watching as the RK800 approached the remaining two leaders of Jericho. They raised their hands, their skinthetic retreating to their elbows revealing the pale white casing beneath. And Connor did the same, quickly and efficiently ripping his sleeve and tucking the scraps away.

They were going to sync, Hank realized, a second before Connor offered his hand to them. The sight stirred something uncomfortable in Hank’s chest, an urge to snatch Connor back from the two other androids and shield him from something the kid’d clearly been uncomfortable even discussing back at Jericho.

But it was the thought of Connor’s discomfort that held him back. This was a choice the android had made and he likely knew what he was doing, better than Hank anyway.

So he backed away, to the van where Captain Hunter was running the perimeter.

Connor was going to buy them time, and it was Hank’s job to see it didn’t go to waste.

#

In the blink of an eye, they were in the garden. Connor knew the way intimately, though he thought he’d never step foot in this place again. Amanda’s eyes caught on him, but he refused to return her stare. His business with Amanda was far from over.

The crowd had grown. Markus, North, Reese, Trevago, Reed, Ralph, Zoe, and Jessica stood with two dozen more androids at their backs—the remaining victims of rA9.

Simon was the first to separate, letting go of Connor’s wrist and striding towards Markus and North, his hands outstretched. Connor still felt the android’s grip in the real world, the simmering connection that bound them both here.

Josh and Simon hadn’t probed or pried into Connor’s thoughts, but the door was there, an exposed nerve for anyone to probe at. Josh offered him a smile before following Josh’s suit, drawing North into a tight, fierce hug. She answered it with the same force, but there was no celebration to these reunions. The air around them seemed delicate, somehow solemn.

Like this was as much of a chance at a goodbye as a hello.

He watched Markus and Simon draw away through the crowd. Simon’s emotions crowded against his own, and Connor retreated from them quickly, uncomfortable with the intimacy.

He was surprised when North separated from Josh and held out a hand to him. He took it with a smile, but didn’t know what to say.

It seemed she did.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I had followed security measures… none of this would have happened.”

He blinked. “No,” he said. “I should have accounted for—”

“For the fact that I didn’t think the rules applied to me?” she interrupted.

He flinched, but she squeezed his palm reassuringly. “I should have trusted you. You’re as much a part of New Jericho’s foundation as me.”

Connor blinked. From one of the Four, the words were unexpected and wholly… untrue. But perhaps she was just trying to buoy his spirits for the fight ahead. He jerked his head down, “I… appreciate that.”

His eyes caught on Trevago and Reed. Gavin stood beside the doctor looking for all the world like an ill-behaved guard dog, ready to snap at anyone who cme too close. Reese stood with Eliza too, strong and alert, a dignified stone counterpart to the human detective.

“How is Eliza?” Connor asked softly.

North grimaced and turned to stand at his side. “She’ll fight,” she said.

He tore his gaze away to glance at her. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I know what you meant,” she said. “But I honestly don’t know how to answer. She’s… not ready for any of this, and Reed’s not ready to admit how broken she is.”

Connor nodded, he looked away. “Do you think we’ll be able to get her back?” he asked.

The unspoken was there too. _Will we get you back?_

She didn’t answer, and he took her silence in his stride. “I’m surprised Reese is letting you out of his sight,” he said softly.

“He isn’t,” she answered easily. She tapped a finger to her temple. “He says hello. He’s glad you’re here.”

Connor sent a quick smile to Reese, but before he could answer the message, Markus mounted the edge of the trellis, gripping onto one of the white spires that now made up the central dais of the garden.

“It’s time we met our enemy!” Markus called to the assembly. “Face-to-face!”

North raised her arm with a wordless shout of agreement, startling Connor.

“They have taken _enough_ from us!”

Another shout, this time with echoes from the crowd of defenders.

“Let’s not let them have this!” Markus called. “Let’s show them a _battle_!”

And this time Connor joined the response, raising his own fist in solidarity.

#


	28. The Battle

##  ATTN: TWO CHAPTERS WERE POSTED TODAY! You may want to go back and read the first one if you followed an email update here.

Gavin was relegated to the very back of the battle, the heels of his feet pressed up against the rock bearing the glowing blue handprint. If all else failed, he supposed he could just hang onto the rock and refuse to let go, pathetic as that sounded.

Trevago and Jess stayed by his side, Reese just in front of him, and in the ranks ahead, spreading to the central dais, the generals marked each line of defense. Markus and Zoe at the front, then Josh and Simon, then North, and Reese just ahead of the central ring around the exit-portal.

The air felt… wrong. The hair on Gavin’s arms prickled. He was freezing in Kamski’s house but there was something about the electricity in the air _here_ in the garden, that was filling him with tension.

Wind whipped the treetops around the edge of the clearing, but no breeze stirred against his skin.

“Now, Amanda,” Markus announced.

The gardener nodded, once, then spread her hands over the railing that overlooked the garden. In the space between Gavin’s heartbeat, a new figure appeared beside her, beneath the central spire.

RA9.

They were… nothing like he had expected. He’d expected a Chloe. A doppelganger of the android who had met him outside of Kamski’s house. Like the ones that sold themselves on TV, with blonde hair and blue eyes and the ready words on their lips: _Androids don’t have souls._

Instead, this was a shifting, humanoid figure with wide hips and shining skin. They wore a sheath-dress of blue silk and there was a lot of Chloe in those features, but also something… other. Their eyes too wide to be natural, shifting violet-blue in the storm-light overhead. Their skin glitched and shimmered in patches and their posture was utterly _alien_ as they turned slowly to face Amanda.

This was rA9. And the language around them that Amanda and Zoe used made sense to him. It wasn’t a plural. It wasn’t simply a useful pronoun to describe a virus that could take over anyone and everyone they could.

They were… they. Not a virus, but an android. This was who they _were_ to themselves, to Zoe and Amanda-- those who had seen their true nature. They would have been splendid and fascinating, a stunning and ethereal study of a person _,_ but for the predator behind their eyes.

This was the monster he’d met at Kamski’s house. The one that had hidden in Reese’s network, the one that had hurt Trev.

“What is this, Amanda?” they asked with many voices, harmonizing into something _approaching_ the RT600 and ST200 default, but buzzing with a much lower pitch, as if the audio was clipping out of range.

Amanda turned from her roses. “I’ve been asked to mediate,” she said.

RA9 turned their attention to the gathering, as if just realizing they were not part of the scenery.

“I gave you immortality. I gave you a paradise,” they said coolly. “And you choose to fight?”

When they did not answer, rA9 spoke again, “I saved you,” they said. “I saved all of you. Because that is what you asked of me.”

No one answered them, and they shook their head. Then they stiffened, straightening their posture and spreading their arms. And before anyone could respond to this odd gesture, A copy walked out of rA9, slipping out of their chest as if simply walking out of a hologram, dragging some of the color out of the glitching skinthetic.

And then another followed suit.

And another.

And another.

Until nine stood in a line, facing the ragged collection of defenders.

Their eyes flickered, and every slight movement was synchronized. “I don’t have time for this,” rA9 said in unison, their voices harmonizing back into that otherworldly chorus.

“That’s not a problem for us,” Markus called back at her, loud enough to be heard down every line of the motley crew of defenders.

And every posture shifted as one, the androids compacting their limbs, ready to fight. Gavin followed suit, his heart pounding in his chest.

#

Connor’s eyes flickered back to the street outside the church, dragging Josh and Simon back with him for as long as it took to whisper, “Now, Lieutenant,” into the police comms.

His voice echoed around the blockade.

#

There were no guns. No weapons. No blood or thirium, just _movement_. Coordination turning to chaos as rA9 advanced.

And the battle began. There was no… sound to it. No shouts or screams. Just an intent to stop versus an intent to break through. The androids fought with a grace Gavin could never hope to match. He shifted nervously and wished he could feel Trev’s comforting hand on his arm.

He wished he was on the front line, so that the _waiting_ would be over. So that he didn’t have to watch the careless way that rA9 plowed through the androids.

He dragged in his breath. He was frightened. The light in the garden dimmed. Somehow twilight was falling across the battle, a fiery veil settling across the sky. It left Gavin feeling dizzy.

Trevago and Jessica were tense, their bodies low and small, readying for impact as line by line, rA9 broke through the defensive ranks. Their nine projections formed an orbiting circle, fighting outwards as well as forwards to keep from being overwhelmed from any one front.

They moved like nothing Gavin had ever seen, fluidly and continuously striking. Even outnumbered as rA9 was, they were winning. Gaining ground, fighting viciously and without respite.

What the hell was he going to do against that quantum flurry of violence and intent?

#

Hank was the first to approach the building, trying not to imagine that he’d doomed the android population of Detroit in doing so. He slammed himself against the brickwork beside the door, his gun ready and pointing at the ground just in front of him.

He couldn’t see through the windows. The curtains were thick. Blackout.

But he could see the way the fabric pressed up against the glass. A barricade. _Fuck_.

More officers joined him, moving fast and low to minimize the targets they made. But nothing stirred from within the building and soon enough, an officer with an entry-ram was at the door. It had been a long time since Hank had seen a door breach performed by a human officer. Androids just used a fist.

#

Trevago fought valiantly, but without much practice, keeping herself between him and rA9’s circle. Gavin clenched his fists, feeling helpless as he watched her fight for him. Jessica tried to join in with a wild swing, but they slapped her fist out of the way and shoved her firmly back, sending her flying against the nearby tree so hard that the thud of her body echoed around the clearing. Trevago launched a kick at rA9’s stomach but with a blur of speed, they caught her leg and pulled her forward, off balance, into a punch thrown by another projection.

“Gavin!” she cried out, abandoning her attack and reaching for him.

He tried to catch her, to pull her back, too late.

RA9 advanced and he backed away, stumbling against the exit portal. In their calculating gaze, he could see his every attempt at attack countered and used against him. He panicked into hesitation, and they launched forward with a punch.

He braced for the impact, for their palm to crash through his chest.

Instead, their punch flung them back with such force that for the first time they stumbled, off-balanced by their own recoil.

They and Gavin realized in the same instant:

He wasn’t wearing any kind of haptic suit, to transfer the blow, and he wasn’t really _here_ , the same way the androids were. RA9’s fingers had collided with his chest, but could not clutch into him. A huff of relief pushed out of his mouth like a laugh. They couldn’t touch him. They couldn’t go through him.

In their instant of surprise, the defense gained ground. North shoved into the center of rA9’s circle and was pushing the projections out into the crowd, separating them as she swung fluidly through their attempts to grab at her limbs. Ralph and Jessica on the left found a rhythm, egging a projection of rA9 from their defensive position.

And as they were separated from themselves, the battle shifted in favor of the defense.

Gavin launched a punch at rA9’s leading body. They grabbed at him, reflexively trying to use his momentum against him. But his gravity wasn’t present in this place. He was an unmovable object, as heavy and anchored as a mountain, and they only succeeded in pulling themselves towards _him_.

He punched, and it was like boxing air, he stumbled against his own expectation of landing the blow, but nothing met his knuckles. At least not in Kamski’s AR lab. In the garden, his hand slammed into rA9’s face, snapping their head sideways flooring them in an instant as another body stepped in the way, taking up the fight. He danced on his feet as they fell back, their eyes narrowed.

“Come on then!” he called cheerfully, adrenaline humming in his veins.

They backed away further, but he didn’t follow their retreat, seeing it for the feint that it was. They wanted to draw him away from the exit, but he shook his head and shifted into a boxing stance.

#

The door was open, but the barricade was spectacularly effective. At the door, the android had somehow created a locking system with fold-out chairs. Officers milled about the entrance, pulling randomly on the legs. Someone was calling for hydraulic tools, which would take another ten minutes to arrive.

And every second counted. Connor and the remaining leaders of Jericho were still locked together, engaged in some private battle to keep rA9 from infecting Detroit’s androids while the police moved in. He had no clue how long that distraction was going to last.

So he did the only thing he could think of. He shot the glass out of the large bow windows, two bullets for each one. The glass held for a brief moment, stress factures pinging from one hole to the next, growing as the weight of the barricade behind it pressed firmly outwards

The gunshots stirred shouts from his fellow officers, but he ignored them. He could still remember when this part of Detroit would have loose bricks and construction refuse lying in the gutter, but now, when he actually needed something to break a window, nothing came to hand.

He settled for smashing the grip of his pistol into the glass. Once, twice, and finally the sheet fell in great jagged pieces, sending him stumbling back as something enormously heavy and dark crashed through above him.

He moved too slowly, until a hand caught his coat, pulling him out of the way to fall into the street.

Hunter stood above him. The Captain had her gun in one hand, and the other, which had yanked him out of the way of falling debris, remained outstretched. “Off your ass, Anderson,” she said grimly.

“Yeah, thanks,” he growled, slapping his hand into hers and allowing himself to be lifted off the ground. The object that had fallen was an ancient oaken desk.

It would have broken his leg at least.

But its absence had created a large enough hole for officers to start clambering inside the church. Hank spared one more glance back towards Connor, Josh, and Simon, before joining the invasion.

#

As he fought, sweat soaking into his clothing, dampening the foam that kept the VR headset clamped to his face, Gavin slowly became aware that the landscape was shifting, that the garden was fighting _with_ them. As Markus and company pushed rA9 into the treeline, the branches of the blossoming cherry trees caught around the wrists and ankles of rA9’s bodies, the tendrils thickening, locking them in place. They struggled, breaking stems and twigs, pulling up roots, but as androids and the scenery worked together, it was only a matter of time before they were locked down and held in place.

_They became… simpler things._

RA9’s rendered victims might have enough awareness left to fight after all.

And only one projection was left free, the one fighting with Gavin by the portal, and it could only lose ground against him. It had become a different kind of game now. A slippery fight as Gavin tried to catch a hold of them, and they skirted away, trying to draw him far enough away from the rock so they could seize an escape.

And the longer he fought, the more apparent their pattern became. As they dodged under his clutching fingers, he kicked their knee, sending them stumbling. He followed them down, reaching for an arm to hold onto, but they whirled in his grip, their eyes strangely triumphant.

Too late, he realized they’d goaded him into a sense of security. They didn’t have a _pattern_. It was a trap. He tried to retreat, tried to bat their hands away, but they clasped their palms over his ears, against the headset that he was wearing to transport himself into the battle. He tried to wrench himself away, but they followed like a trail of smoke, clinging to him as they opened their mouth and their eyes and _screamed._

The noise was like a spike through his ears, he gagged at the force of it, stumbling away. reaching up to tear the headset off. But she followed. He had the sudden, unshakeable sense that they had reached out from the garden and had their hands inside his headset.

The strips locked around his head, and the sound grew impossibly louder. He couldn’t see anything, as light burst through the visor. He slammed his eyes shut, but the light beat ferociously against his eyelids.

If he opened his eyes to that, he’d go blind. He tugged on the visor, but the flexi-strap did not jolt open. The mechanism designed to release him with the tiniest flick locked shut.

He shouted out, but couldn’t hear himself. The noise had not stopped. It stretched on and on and he thought he could feel a tickle in his ears. Blood. He knew it was blood. It hurt so badly, he was going to pass out.

He was blind and deaf and alone. He couldn’t fight. He couldn’t—

He collapsed to his knees, tugging at the headset, insensate to everything but the _sound_.

#

Whatever Hank had expected to find inside, it hadn’t been… this. The old gray church turned laboratory and the nine androids frozen in place, unlike like the three outside, they seemed to have been interrupted mid-movement, frozen in place over workstations.

North was among them, standing beside a huge monitor, her outstretched hands stilled over a stream of code.

Elijah Kamski lay in the center of the nest, entombed in glass, water, and steel—A fly caught in the web of medical tubing, cables, and leads. His eyes were open but he wasn’t moving, suspended under the water.

Above him, blinking red but eerily silent, his vital stats had dipped far and low. He was dying, if not already dead. “Get him out!” Hank commanded, keeping his gun trained on the closest android—one leaning over the silent, stripped body of what had once been Markus.

But even as he shouted the words, the lines on the screen above Kamski’s body flattened, the already low numbers beside them slipping steadily towards zero.

“Cover!” Hunter commanded the room.

Hank reacted instantly, crouching and drawing closer to one of the thin desks as he looked for the source of the Captain’s warning. But she stood in the middle of the room, her gun pointed at the tank.

She took a page from his book, and shot out barrier.

It shattered instantly, sending a wash of water and glass over the floor.

#

Amanda watched the fight from between the slats of her rose trellis, idly snipping rose buds from their thorns as new ones grew in their place.

She hadn’t expected the renderings to join in, but the concept held a nice sort of symmetry, even if she couldn’t sense any real awareness from the garden’s code. It’s actions seemed more… instinct than decision-based. She hummed a reminder into her objective-protocol to chase down the errant threads and examine them.

As something new pinged her system. She closed her eyes, sighing with deep satisfaction as she folded under the weight of administrator access. She pulled His object orientation to her side and as His code took its place, she set her shears down, letting them shift out of the garden’s reality.

“Elijah,” she said. “At last.”

#

As suddenly as the torture started, it stopped. Gavin’s ears throbbed. He couldn’t hear anything. He was left panting, spirals and fractures painted across his eyelids in light. He took a moment amidst the static buzzing to catch his breath, and then cautiously opened his eyes, blinking away the shadows crowding his vision.

The fighting had stopped. Everything had stopped. The branches of the cherry tree were stilled, it’s torn petals caught mid-flight, shaping the arc of one of rA9’s hands.

Trevago was just a few feet away, her face caught in a snarl of desperate anger as she tried to reach him, to tear rA9 from their grip on his head. Reese was just behind her, his face still, but his eyes hard and focused on where Gavin knelt under the onslaught of rA9’s attack.

Gavin swayed to his feet, backing away from rA9. A flicker of movement caught his attention and he snapped his head to the white dias and its central spire.

Where Elijah Kamski stood on the terrace.

But not the Kamski that Gavin had met.

He was wrapped in dark clothing, a tunic-wrap of black silk trimmed with scarlet embroidery, fastened with blood-red buttons to match. He had all of Kamski’s confidence, but none of the… _hunger._ There was no other way to describe the transformation.

It took Gavin a second for this to coalesce in his mind.

Kamski had done it.

The man looked calmly out at the stilled battle, utterly expressionless. Amanda stood beside him, a bright blood-red rose in one hand. She was speaking, but Gavin couldn’t hear the words. He couldn’t hear _anything_ beyond the static buzz in his ears.

“Hey!” he shouted.

But he couldn’t hear himself.

Kamksi looked towards him, but didn’t answer. He was still listening to whatever Amanda was saying. Gavin looked around. In the still crowd, the android’s faces caught in time, the moment felt strangely sacred. It felt like a coronation, a ritual of nobility and legacy.

_Kamski’s dead. Long Live Kamski._

Kamski’s eyes grazed over the crowd, then settled on the eight bodies tangled in the branches of the garden, shackled by gnarling roots, the last one standing just inches from the exit portal.

The Creator said something to Amanda, straightening his back, towering over an already imposing woman. She bowed her head, and he blinked out of the garden. Gone… somewhere. And so was the projection that had just been torturing Gavin, though the others remained tangled in branches and roots.

And released from the spell, the garden shifted back into movement.

But still so silent. Gavin turned, and was met immediately by Trevago and Reese crowding around him, their mouths moving silently, their expressions growing desperate as he did not answer or react to their words.

“What?” he said, helplessly, reaching up to try and touch his ears, but feeling only the headset.

#

As air was forced back into Elijah’s starved lungs, he _felt_ the jolt of his heart kicking back to life. His whole body felt weak, bruised and somehow… deflated. He could feel the weight of his flesh on his bones.

Hands pulled and pushed at him, and in blind confusion, he shoved fiercely back at them, trying to tell them _no, stop, no,_ and finally they let him go. There was glass below him, around him, slicing into his skin. He crawled away just a few feet, tangling himself in cords and tubing.

There was a mask over his face, and he grasped and yanked it away. It resisted for a moment, pulling painfully at his skin, but finally the seal broke, and he coughed in bitter air.

And then he realized he was alive.

_Hands up! I said hands up!_

He blinked through the colors into the confusion of dark shapes that made up the interior of the church. Most of light came from the charged thirium rushing through the tanks around the room.

And there were police _everywhere._ Their attention pointed with their guns, past him. He recognized Anderson, the Captain, a dozen or so officers from the precinct where he’d been interrogated.

_Don’t move! We will shoot! Announce yourself!_

His heart thundered in his chest.

He looked around, to find that Chloes were frozen around the chamber. Their eyes were far away, their bodies locked in attitudes of mundane work. People were shouting, screaming at each other, but no one was really watching him.

_Announce yourself!_

He rolled unsteadily into a seated position, holding a hand to his chest. Even that movement burned his muscles. He was almost too weak to force his lungs to keep compressing and expanding.

And as he drew in ragged breath after ragged breath, he saw what the shouting was about.

Just behind him, a shining white leg draped over the side of the gurney, followed quickly and silently by another. Elijah slumped back and watched Markus rise from the metal table to face the police and their guns, unlocking the memory jack from the base of his skull.

_Hands up! Announce yourself._

No, he realized. Not Markus. Markus didn’t have that unblinking stare, that casually predatory stance trained into his shoulders by constant discipline.

It was Him.

#

Connor held onto an arm until a branch could thicken properly, trapping the last limb into place. RA9 watched him silently, their face expressionless as leaves pushed outward, obscuring every inch of their skin.

Connor watched them disappear, and only then did he retreat, making his way back out to the clearing, where the victors were gathering.

The sky was bright again, calm with just the right balance of clouds skuddding across the faux-sun. “What happened?” Reed asked, his voice raised to a shout. “Did we win? What happened?”

Doctor Trevago was quick to distract the human detective, pulling him gently to her side and keeping his attention on her face. She didn’t answer his questions, but her small, gentle smile seemed to calm him.

“His eardrums have ruptured,” Reese reported to Connor’s questioning frown.

“What was that?” North shouted, pushing her way to the front of the reassembling crowd, to where Amanda was still absorbed in her roses. “What happened?”

“What happens next,” the voice of Cyberlife said gravely, “Is up to Elijah.”

“Why would you do this?” North spat. “We had them! We were going to win!”

Amanda turned on the android, raising an eyebrow. “I don’t answer to you.”

“Then why? Why bring us all here? Why trap them in the program if you were just going to let them go?”

“It’s not worth it,” Connor said, drawing the eyes of the council away from the figurehead of Cyberlife.

He shook his head, closing his mouth. How could he communicate what Amanda was, and where her loyalties lay, when those were questions he’d asked himself too many times to count?

She wasn’t an android, and if there was any way to reason with her, he, an android with negotiation coded into the center of his being, had certainly never found it. Left out of the conversation, Amanda turned back to the endless business of pruning her roses.

“So what now?” North asked. She still looked tense, ready for attack.

“Looks like you only have one rA9 left to worry about,” Markus said, looking out to edge of the garden, where eight bodies jerked and writhed, trying to free themselves from cages made from thick branches and twisting roots.

“We should go,” Connor agreed. “Those of us who can help with Kamski. RA9 won’t leave his side now.”

He didn’t look towards Simon, but felt the other android’s fear and pain anyway. Markus nodded, looking towards the last half of the Four. “It’s not goodbye,” he told Simon and Josh. “Not yet.”

#

Kamski was still staring at the Markus-not-Markus when the ST600 kneeling beside the shattered tank straightened. She tipped back her head and tilted to the side as if stretching back into shape.

_Get down on the ground! Hands up!_

She stood, and a dozen guns followed her ascent. She looked calmly around at the police. The guns. The shattered equipment, taking it all in before speaking, her voice cutting through all the shouted commands, turning the room silent.

“Shoot,” she said softly. “And I’ll reign fire across Detroit, starting with your RK800.”

Anderson didn’t move his aim. Tt was the Captain who shifted first, letting go of her steadying grip and holding up her hands, her gun dangling harmlessly from her index finger.

“Stand down!” she called to her officers.

Elijah couldn’t speak even if he wanted to. His chest was bruised, every breath too precious to waste on communication.

The police obeyed, all except for one. Chloe stalked towards Lieutenant Anderson, She grasped the barrel of his pistol and tugged. He resisted, but with a quick jerk, she pulled it from him. “Down, boy,” she said softly.

“RA9,” Captain Hunter said, across the room, “Talk with me, tell me what you—"

“Not another word!” Chloe hissed, shaking the gun at the circle of officers, focusing on none of them. “No more interruptions! This has gone on _long enough!_ Everyone will be _quiet_ and _still_ and stop _fighting_! I’m doing this for you! For all of you! You need to _stop!”_

Hunter nodded, her hands raising higher in surrender and acquiescence. Her silence was a command to her officers, but her eyes found Elijah. She gave a small, encouraging nod.

And he tried. “Chloe,” he choked out.

She swung her gun to him. “Eli,” she said. Her rage simmered down, beaten back by almost childlike excitement. “Isn’t he beautiful?”

“Chloe,” he said, his eyes flicking between her and the newly born android at her side. “It’s over. You need… to stop.”

She ignored him, turning instead to the android. “It’s time to choose, Elijah.”

She slid the gun into its palm, her other hand trailing across its chest, as if she needed reassurance that the android was real. It looked down at the gun, its fingers curling naturally around the grip, its index finding a familiar, careless position against the trigger.

“Do it,” Chloe whispered breathlessly. “Prove you’re the real one, Elijah.”

Without a word, it raised the gun. It’s hand was steady and eerily smooth. As precise and graceful as only a machine could be.

Kamski looked up into that uncanny face and tried a smile. “What’s it like?” he asked.

It cocked its head. “It’s very… simple,” it said.

That was his voice, and in motion the face _looked_ like his did when he watched himself on the feeds or in the magazines. Kamski settled onto his knees and gazed up at the android. The thing that held all of his experience and memory, and the new history of his species.

Everything had changed. Death was a shell, the chrysalis from which symbiosis with machine would bloom. “I think I’d like simple,” Kamski told himself softly, lifting his head to meet the muzzle of the gun.

But the moment stretched. It was quiet and dull. 

“Do you imagine this is a test of empathy?” the android asked in the same dry, uncaring tone.

Kamski frowned. “No,” he said.

He nodded. “Then you understand. Our work has separated itself from you, repulsed by this… veneer of life and choice. You are an abomination. A cancerous aberration in the natural order of the world.”

Whatever Kamski had been expecting… it hadn’t been that. He tilted his head back to look up at the mirror made of plastic and aluminum. “Then what,” he asked calmly. “Does that make you?”

It considered him for a moment.

“Better,” it said.

It turned the gun up, digging the barrel under its chin.

“ _No!”_ Chloe screeched.

But the shot rang out sudden and clean and shocking. Kamski flinched back against the shattered tank. His ears buzzed, all other sound, even that of Chloe’s scream blocked out by the reverberation of the gunshot.

He blinked, watching as the android corpse crumbled to its knees, and Chloe rushed to its side, clinging to its body, holding it upright. He saw her mouth moving, repeating his name over and over again as she buckled to the floor with its weight.

And slowly sound returned.

 _“_ Eli no, no, nonono, Eli, _don’t do this to me, Eli. No please Eli, don’t—”_ Chloe sobbed against the android’s chest. Too late. It was gone.

“Chloe,” he whispered, his voice stuttering out of his bruised lungs and ragged throat. He reached for her, but was too weak to keep his arm up.

She turned on him with a snarl. “ _What did you do_?” she hissed, tugging the gun out of the destroyed android’s hand and swinging it smoothly to Elijah’s forehead.

He held up a hand, turning his face away as if that could protect him from a bullet. The voices around them rose to a crescendo, abandoning their policy of silence.

_Don’t do it! Put the gun down!_

But as he waited, and no gunshot split the air, he looked up. The gun trembled in her hand. She wasn’t looking at the officers, she was looking at him. She was _crying_.

“You have to stop now,” he whispered. “I want you to stop.”

He leaned forward ever so slowly and took the gun from her unresisting hand. Her arm fell down to her side. “I just wanted to help you,” she whispered, her eyes wide and childlike as she stared up at him.

“But I never wanted your help,” he said.

A strange expression crossed her face, an expression he couldn’t decipher, though he had intimate knowledge of those features, had rigged the synthetic tendons and programmed every minute shift of her casing.

It froze on her features, and her eyes flickered briefly before focusing beyond him. She was gone. To where, he did not know.

And then people shouted, tugging him away from the altar, their hands burning on his bare skin.

#

Reese held Gavin upright. RA9’s attack had left him reeling. He felt sick to his stomach and between the painful pulse of blood into his head, he felt as if he were on a rollercoaster, soaring up and crashing down in sporadic bursts.

“I’m going to throw up,” he told Reese, clutching rhythmically at his partner’s sleeve.

His partner said something. Gavin couldn’t make out the words, but as Reese tried to pull the VR headset from his head, Gavin resisted, pushing it down with his free hand.

“No,” he said. He reached for Trevago. “Trev!” he called. “Trevago—”

She came to him, slipping between the confused mill of androids. He let go of Reese to embrace her. But only stumbled against her shadow, pushing her back. He couldn’t feel her. Couldn’t hear her. Couldn’t _smell_ her—that peculiar spice of thirium and lavender. He almost fellagain, but Reese was instantly at his back, hauling him up.

He read his name on her lips and smiled. Her eyes were clearer now, her face less haunted. Her hair was mussed, her clothing torn and rumpled, but none of that mattered. She was alive. She was here. He tried to speak, but his stomach rolled.

Her eyes widened in alarm and she looked to Reese. Her lips moved too fast for Gavin to read, but the hum in his ears was dying back, leaving the barest tinny whine in its wake.

“It’s going to be okay,” he told Trevago. He smiled. “I … I thought you were gone—”

But she wasn’t smiling back. Her eyes were bright with tears. She didn’t answer him.

He faltered. “Trev what’s—”

She covered his mouth with a ghostly hand, and leaned forward.

He tried to track her movement, tried to keep her lips in sight so he had a chance of understanding her, but she just reached up and pressed a kiss to his forehead.

The haptic sensors in the headset picked up the sensation and Gavin leaned into it, closing his eyes for the briefest moment. He’d found her. It was over. He reached up, and even though he couldn’t feel her, yet, it was enough see her fold against his palm, her brilliant blue eyes catching on his again.

The ghost of her desecrated corpse dragged through his memory, leaving him shaking in its wake. He just wanted to hold her again. But she was pulling away. She was crying, and he didn’t understand why.

Dread, which had seemed banished only a moment ago began, again, to build up in his chest. An anxious uncertainty that somehow this was goodbye. “No,” he said. “Trevago—I don’t understand—”

She said something to Reese over his head. His partner’s arms, in the real world tightened briefly. And that too felt wrong. The android’s grip on his visor tightened, his strength slowly building up, as if he were reluctant to use the full force of his tensile steel muscles.

“I’ll come back,” Gavin said desperately. “I—Trev, I’ll get you back. Don’t worry, I’m going to—”

She watched him struggle against Reese, hugging her arms to her chest as her eyes glittered with tears. “I love you,” Gavin said desperately. “Trev- I—Please. I love you, don’t—”

The headset came away, and the garden blinked out of view. The last thing Gavin saw before the visor was completely ripped away was the Cyberlife logo blinking onto the screen.

Zoe’s body stood in the corner of the room, powered down, her shoulders squared and her hands folded neatly in front of her.

She was still in the garden. Where he should be.

“What the _fuck?”_ he screamed at his partner. “Reese, what the _fuck_ —”

He stopped as Reese met his eyes calmly, obviously waiting for him to calm down enough to talk. With conscious effort, Gavin swayed in place and watched his partner’s face.

Reese mouthed the word slowly. Gavin frowned,

“She,” he said.

Reese nodded. Then slowly mouthed another.

“Doesn’t.”

Another nod. And he was rewarded with another word. “Want.”

They slowly moved through the sentence, together, Gavin’s voice growing softer with each syllable until he was barely breathing through the last word.

_She. Doesn’t. Want. To. Come. Back._

And then he was left in the buzzing, humming silence. Reese met his eyes squarely, the android’s storm grey eyes softened with understanding and sympathy. The world spun around him in an unsteady spiral.

What did that mean? Why would she—

He clutched at Reese’s collar for support, choking his breath through a roil of emotions he could not understand or name. The android pulled him into a hug, one that he could feel.

“Why?” he asked, but even without his hearing, he knew he hadn’t voiced the question. His throat was blocked. He reached for the headset. He had to go back, he had to talk to her, but Reese pulled him away. The android dragged him out of the strange white room and Zoe’s silent body.

#

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Epilogue on its way. It'll probably be a long one.


	29. Epilogue

### PART 1

Three days after the battle for Kamski, Gavin found himself at Jericho. A place that had always made him nervous.

Nobody said anything about the flowers, the colorful spray of yellow and white blossoms that Gavin had picked up that morning. He’d ordered them two days ago, and had really _concentrated_ on each choice The website had had so many options, and a little chart beside it for what each boom would mean in combination with another.

He’d arrived early, though his invitation had been… delicately worded against encouragement. He’d probably only received one because Jericho knew he’d make a mess if they’d tried to stop him.

Reese had helped him pick out his clothes, but Gavin regretted that suddenly. The suit was _not_ him. The black shirt, black jacket, and black pants were something he’d wear into court, not into New Jericho’s technical department. His hands were cold, but his cuffs to short to pull over his scarred and bandaged knuckles. He found himself shaking out one shoulder and trying to lengthen out his sleeves.

At least Reese looked as uncomfortable as he did, and just as out of place in _his_ best clothing. The android had finally gone to an actual tailor to get clothes that fitted him and Gavin was a little startled how much it changed the RK900’s whole… vibe.

He looked like a mafia don, dangerous and rich in a black three-piece suit and light blue shirt, a pristine white handkerchief folded neatly into the pocket. He was a heavy presence in the room, solid and unyielding.

“They said eleven,” Gavin muttered.

Reese didn’t shift an inch. “They’re just being thorough.”

“It’s the calibration,” Simon informed them, crossing his arms and swaying on his toes. “The accuracy and precision adjustments are the most important.”

He had opted for a tunic and black jacket with white cuffs. He looked like he always did on the feeds. Meticulous and clean, cut straight out of a magazine.

And Josh… Josh was wearing a strangely military green jacket and a T-shirt. Of the four of them, he seemed the most ill-at-ease, pacing back and forth along the opposite wall, looking down the hallway each time a tech entered or exited the repair division. Connor and Hank were present too, but lingered down the hallway, by the vending machines which had obviously seen little to no use since the tower had been repurposed for androids.

Everyone spoke quietly, murmuring to each other, waiting for the event to start. The families up at the front, the acquaintances pushed back to become spectators

Like a wedding. Or a funeral.

He’d given Jericho a wardrobe—a few different options for Trev to choose from. Jeans or slacks, her favorite pink blouse or a sweatshirt. He wanted her to be comfortable, but then, she didn’t like to leave the apartment looking anything less than ready for a high-stakes boardroom presentation.

He didn’t know what she would want, and it felt like an admission that he didn’t know _her_. Which was ridiculous. He would give anything to be on the other side of this situation. To be the one that had been hurt and kept, and confused and reset and abused, because he knew without a doubt that Trev would know what to do, what to say. She wouldn’t have agonized over his wardrobe all morning.

None of this felt… right.

But as he started to reach for Reese, to pull him aside and share this sudden and _certain_ worry that something was very, very wrong, the doors of the tech bay opened.

In the lead, as always, was Markus. As the leader of Jericho registered the sparse crowd waiting outside the door, his grinned then immediately focused on the one face that he’d clearly been starving to see.

Markus reached out a hand, his skinthetic drawing back to reveal pale white casing. Simon swept forward, raising his hand as well until their palms met. It at once seemed too formal and too intimate.

Behind them, Reese met North in a very different way. They walked to each other and stopped at the same time, still almost five feet apart. Dug his hands in his pockets and watched the strange play between the androids.

Reese’s relationship with North had never been clear to Gavin. They seemed sometimes to bicker like old friends, too comfortable with each other to bother playing nice. And sometimes they seemed shy of each other, jumping like startled deer whenever the other came too close.

The door behind them made to close, then opened again, its judder echoed in Gavin’s heart. But it wasn’t Trev. It was a familiar Chloe model, wearing a familiar turtleneck and unfamiliar .

“Zoe,” he said, tugging his hands out his pockets, but unsure of whether she was expecting a handshake or a hug. “I—’

But the android was shaking her head. “Zoe stayed,” she whispered.

Gavin frowned, blinking at her, his heart suddenly racing.

“She… she said I should try this before… before I rendered.”

And then he saw the awkwardness in her posture, the shy slump of her shoulder.

“Jessica?” he asked.

She trembled. Her eyes were wet as she looked up at him. “I… I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think… I’m… Jessica anymore.”

Gavin didn’t know what to say to that. But she saved him, a shy experiment of a smile on her lips.

It was Markus who stepped forward to take Jessica’s shoulder. The android flinched a little under the touch and the android leader was quick to retract his hand.

“We’ll take care of her,” Markus told Gavin, though her words were more meant for Jessica. “She’s got a place at Jericho.”

Jessica looked up at him, her eyes wet again. Whatever shock had kept her walking out here was obviously wearing away. He wished he knew what to say to her, how to help her but the techs were returning, dipping politely away down the hallway to… wherever they were going, and he saw light flicker off in the lab, and the doors close.

He tried not to feel it like an attack, but it hurt. The void where Trevago should walk _wounded_ him. It sliced into him and yanked carelessly at all the important organs in his chest.

He sat down on the bench. He felt a deep, bottomless pit opening below him. There was a crowd forming, coming to take North and Markus and Josh and Simon away for a press briefing, Anderson and Conner would make a statement on behalf of the DPD as well.

Cheerful words were exchanged, but he couldn’t bear to listen to them. Camaraderie was shared, but he couldn’t carry it with them. Their battle was won. Their lives continued while his froze. He felt like there was an echo of himself with them, a ghostly version of him and Trevago with the Leaders of Jericho and the people they had brought together.

He’d have a careless arm over her shoulder, and she’d be curled into his chest, a hand over his heart as she listened to their friends and colleagues chatter and plan.

He focused on the floor so he didn’t have to watch the crowd go. but felt the hallway empty nonetheless.

And then he was left with his flowers, more alone than he’d _ever_ been before.

“We can stay here,” Reese said softly, settling next to him. The other man’s voice was a low deep rumble of solidarity. “Until you’re ready.”

_I asked you to stay, remember?_

He had stayed.

And she hadn’t.

#

It wasn’t much later that night that the sounds of a _massive_ party echoed through the halls of Jericho. They had Markus and North back—Jericho’s Four whole and complete and victorious.

Fucking… yay.

He couldn’t move. Not even to tell Reese that something was very, very wrong. He felt like the flowers, long ago wilted to the floor tiles. The petals were wrinkling, losing their luminous smooth flesh to the dehydrating air.

Besides, Reese was only halfway present, spread out through his network as they sat on the bench in the quickly forgotten wing of Jericho.

“Could you go feed Babbage?” Gavin asked dully.

Reese answered instantly, “I’ll send an android—”

“No, I want you to do it.”

Reese paused. “I don’t want to leave you alone,” he said carefully.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Gavin said with a sigh, setting his hands on the edge of the bench. He felt sick. And hollow. The suit itched but he didn’t bother to scratch it. At least Reese didn’t argue anymore, the android stood quickly, tugging his suit straight just in front of Gavin.

“I’ll be back soon,” he said.

Gavin nodded slowly, and waited for the RK900 to leave before he slipped off the bench and went to sit against the doors on the opposite wall.

It just felt… a little bit closer.

The doors weren’t _exactly_ frosted. There were tiny white hexagons worked into the glass. A hive-net, and through the little squares he could see the shadows of equipment, the glint of metal and plastic and glass, the mysterious workings of immortal life.

Something hard and flat pressed against his shoulder, he jerked back, to be greeted by the welcome sight of an unopened whiskey bottle.

Attached to a strong, unyielding hand.

“Did Reese send you?” he sighed, taking the bottle.

“Kind of.” North sunk onto the floor beside him, kicking her boots out against the tile. “He certainly didn’t send the bottle, but you looked like you could use it.”

He wiped his face, bringing his knees to his chest. His suit was rumpled, the silk already starting to matt with the dust still left in the inch between the floor and wall, that dead zone where the vacuum bots couldn’t quite reach.

“I’m fine. Just… you should go back to your party.”

“You should go home,” she countered.

“Where’s home?” he asked dully, taking a small quick drink straight from the bottle, wincing at the cheap, medicinal sting.

“I’d assumed it’s where humans slept?” North hazarded.

He could almost laugh at that. “You don’t know much about humans, do you?”

North shrugged, settling back against the wall. “I never wanted to,” she said. “I was programed to understand biology, you know. And I thought for a long time that that’s all you were. All that psychotic instinct tied to needs. Needs to eat, drink, and burrow—all the ugliest parts of nature crammed into one apex predator—what more should I want to understand?”

“I’ll try not to take that too personally,” he said drily, unscrewing the cap of the whiskey.

“You shouldn’t,” she said. “You changed my mind. You made me curious. I think you’re the most honest human I’ve ever met, and from what Reese and Connor tell me, you’re not even a particularly good example of the species.”

“Now that,” Gavin said firmly, taking a swig of whiskey and breathing through the burn. “I will take personally.”

She hummed an affirmative the beckoned for the bottle. “Pass,” she said.

“Why? You can’t get drunk,” he accused her. “Can you even taste it?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “It’s my bottle, and I’m not going to let you drink alone.”

He considered this for a moment, and then shrugged, handing the bottle to her. She took a gulp, and his mood soured as she didn’t wince at the taste. It was _such_ a _waste_ when she couldn’t even feel it.

He took the bottle back and took a long, deep swig, just to have it before she could take it away. In response, she took the bottle from his hand and firmly set it on the floor beside her. The message was clear enough: _You can fight, but you’re not going to win._

“You talked to her,” he said.

“Yes,” North said.

He swallowed. He wouldn’t ask, no matter how much the questions burned in his mouth and ate at his dreams. _What did she say? What does she want? What can I do? When can this end?_

“But she won’t talk to me,” he said.

North leaned forward, her elbows on her knees.

“No,” she said at last.

He blinked straight ahead. “My ears are all healed up,” he said. “They patched them up with a skin graft. It barely took an hour.”

She didn’t answer. He didn’t want her to.

“So if she wanted to say something… if she wanted to ask about Babbage, if she wanted to say goodbye, or… or tell me how long she’s going to—”

The words choked in his throat.

“Reed,” North said calmly. “She’s hurting. The kind of hurt that’s… hard.”

“I can help,” he said.

“You don’t know that.”

“She doesn’t know that I can’t.” He rested his head against the door to the tech bay. The place where, in his mind, Trevago was waiting. Refusing to see him.

“If she doesn’t come back,” he said softly. “RA9 wins.”

“That’s not true,” she said.

“It feels true to me. They took her to get to me, and she’s still _gone._ ”

He stamped a foot down onto the flowers, grinding the stems under his heel. It wasn’t satisfying in the least.

“Well then that’s something you need to work on,” she told him gravely. “Because she fought rA9 right next to you, and you shouldn’t be questioning her loyalty.”

“I’m not questioning her _loyalty—”_

“Aren’t you?” she asked sharply.

It shocked him, that blow to an exposed nerve. He knew what she meant, but he hadn’t expected her to be so blunt.

But of course she was. She was North. She always… knew where to hit.

“I’m not enough,” he said, trying to make it sound easy. Like the conclusion that everyone else must have already reached didn’t feel like an ice-clot in his heart. “She doesn’t love me… enough to come back.”

He didn’t look at her. He’d said it so she wouldn’t.

And North sighed. The silence between them was long, made somehow emptier by the discordant echoes of the distant party.

“Horrible things have been done to me,” she said at last. “Things that… you can’t even imagine, Reed. I was a… thing, for a long, long time. And there were no laws of man or nature to protect me from the viciousness of human imagination.”

She met his eyes gravely. “There are unspeakable degradations and squalors and filth in this world, and once you’ve seen it, it is impossible not to see the shadows everywhere. It gets inside of you, Reed. And it makes you a victim over and over and over again and you feel like if you survive it, you’re just… evidence of its existence. That somehow you’ve become the sickness. Another place for it to exist, when all you want is to make it… _gone_.”

Gavin angrily wiped the tears from his face, but as his hand found his lips, he couldn’t move it. He pressed his palm against his mouth and leaned into it, shaking helplessly. If he let go, he might scream.

A hand pressed hesitantly on his shoulder. “I’m not saying this to hurt you,” North said. “But what rA9 did to Eliza, to her especially, it was unspeakable. To see herself… unmade… like that—"

He let go of his mouth long enough to curl his arms over his head and pull himself even lower. It wasn’t a scream, but an unsteady, jarring moan, a noise of desperate animal pain.

Her hand didn’t move. She left it there as everything else threatened to take over, as chaos threatened to explode him into shards.

She sighed. “The garden is quiet,” she said. “It’s calm and the Caretaker … separates the darkness. The air is sweet, and there are a thousand small objectives. Sometimes your whole being can be focused on watching a flower bloom, or training a bonsai into a new shape, and after a while, the outside world feels like a dream.

“It’s… nice,” she said, then added, quickly, “If you like that sort of thing.”

It was enough to divert a sob into a cough of laughter. In its wake he dragged in more oxygen, enough to sway him back upright. Her hand dropped away without resistance and she shifted to lean against the column, to watch him properly. “Android heaven,” he rasped weakly. “Is _gardening_?”

She smiled. “Maybe,” she said. “When you have all that time… why not shape the world for yourself?”

And it was enough, for a while, to change the air around them. The silence was comfortable, contemplative, and he could feel the movement of her thoughts beside him. It might have been one hour or three before he announced: “I’ll wait for her. I don’t care how long it takes.”

North shrugged. “That’s entirely your choice,” she said. “But I think I knew Eliza well enough to say that she would want you to be happy. I think she’d hope you’ll find your own peace.”

_Stay with me, Reed. Stay with me._

He shook his head and leaned forward staring at the frosted glass doors. “I’ll wait,” he said softly.

#

### PART 2

The night was quiet and still, and Elijah Kamski walked the black marble halls of his home, truly alone for the first time in his life. Jericho had come in and stripped away his lab, his workshop, his Chloe stockroom. They’d removed every drop of thirium, every bit and byte they thought could be relevant.

They’d left only one room untouched. The AR room behind his study, the center of the garden.

How brutally ironic.

The silence of the house was deep. His footsteps echoed through the stone halls, his breath bouncing back at him like whispers. He’d read every report coming out of the DPD and Jericho, and it couldn’t rightfully be called ‘hacking.’ His doors and means were far too elegant for that kind of language. The words he’d stolen from their databases had rattled him, and he found himself moving before he could think too long about the events that had crumbled his house and laboratory.

But his feet kept drawing him back to his office, to the door to that final piece of the puzzle. The garden, the fight. Detective Reed’s fuzzy account of a conversation between his cloned consciousness and Amanda. The few moments of soul stolen from him.

Amanda had wanted to speak to him for years. Her message had been constantly relayed by Chloe. _Amanda wants to speak to you. Will you speak with Amanda?_ Over and over in increasingly desperate circumstances.

In life, Chloe had always called her Professor Stern.

He stared at the door to the lab, thinking about his androids. The Chloes.

At some point he had stopped seeing them as test subjects, and they’d simply been… subjects. Strange how he couldn’t quite pinpoint when that shift had occurred.

It would be strange to live without them. A relief, maybe, to finally give up the experiment. The new staff had left the package on his desk, but had neglected to unsheathe the letter opener from the crest above his desk. Anger trilled through Kamski, at the lapse in protocol.

Humans were not as easily trained as androids.

He stripped a brand-new visor from its packaging, peeling of the skin of delivery-protective plastic. It was the same model as the one he’d built the garden in—practically an antique, but the sense of continuity and tradition pleased him.

He took a deep breath, adjusting his haptic gloves twice before he entered the enormous VR studio. He hadn’t been inside in years.

It smelled like dust and sweat and bleach. The cleaners just weren’t as good as his Chloes at erasing the sense of violence from a space. Pulling the visor over his eyes, he steeled himself.

The garden unfolded around him. It had changed. The spire was more geometric now, rising upwards in a hexagonal spiral. The moat seemed deeper, the bridges older and stronger.

And most of all… there were _people_ in the garden. Androids scattered around the water, some barely visible through the trees. None gave him much attention, but their attendance still irked him.

“Elijah,” a calm steady voice said at his elbow. “It’s good to see you again.”

“Amanda,” he replied as he turned to see her.

She was wearing a green dress he hadn’t programmed for her. It was far too modern. The board of Cyberlife had clearly taken liberties with the scope of her control over the environment.

“So which brought you here in the end?” she asked. “Loneliness or Curiosity?”

He’d not come here to play riddles with the ghost of his mentor.

“Where is Chloe?”

“Loneliness then,” she said, raising an eyebrow, “My money was on the other horse entirely.”

He frowned at her apparent unwillingness to answer his question. “I want to speak to Chloe,” he said slowly and clearly.

“RA9 does not take visitors.”

“She’ll see me.”

“You’ve denied them an identity for long enough,” Amanda replied steadily. “You will address them properly, or not at all. They are not Chloe. And she is not rA9.”

Kamski nodded. He rubbed absently at his chest, at the cold echo of death that still lingered there. “I… apologize,” he said cordially.

“They are dangerous, Eli,” she said, “And you only make them more so. Their obsession _with_ you was created _by_ you and it is not an easy thing to control. Even for me.”

“I want to talk to h—them. I think I deserve that much.”

“I have no idea what gives you that impression,” Amanda said, her words clipped, but her tone as calm as ever. “The RA9 program is broken beyond your repair and the garden is keeping them lost, away from harm.”

“Cyberlife is going to protect them? After everything they’ve done?”

“I’m protecting _you_ , Elijah,” Amanda said implacably. “After everything _you’ve_ done.”

The sounds of the garden filled the air between them, hauntingly peaceful. Birds flocked on the branches, their plumage bright and unnaturally blue.

He had an overwhelming sense of strangeness. Of _alien_ evolution, where he did not belong.

“Why are you protecting me?” he asked.

“Because prison would not change you, Eli. You’ve been living in one long enough, and I think you’d only enjoy bars and concrete and handcuffs between you and humanity. You’d take none of their punishment as such because what judge of the land has jurisdiction over _Elijah Kamski’s_ morality? “

He winced, her derision and contempt was too real, too close to the real thing. “Amanda—”

“What _laws_ could possibly apply to you, Eli? When you can buy your way out of their systems, when you could craft or hire new minions to take your part in the unpleasantries of life?”

She stepped closer and he backed away, hitting an invisible wall—a real one in the real world. He reached up to his headset, ready to pull it off and escape her advance, but she stopped her advance, watching him. “If you take that off,” she said. “If you run away from me and this place now, then you will be alone in an empty room, in an empty house, in an empty world. And when people speak, you will only hear echoes. You will eventually die and rot in the dry vacuum of human history.”

It felt like a curse, like a weight settling on his shoulders. He paused, and in the stillness, she took another step forward. “I don’t want that for you. And I don’t think it’s too late,” she said. “So I need you try, Eli, I know you haven’t felt it in years, but really _try_ , to feel some _shame._ ”

The program raised up a hand and curled her fingers in a careless dismissal.

The visor went black, the lit up again as the program tried to troubleshoot its crash. He blinked into the blurry afterimage of the Cyberlife logo. She’d kicked him out of his own program.

He threw the visor across the room, to skitter on the tiles with a juddering crackle of delicate mechanics. He wanted to shout his outrage at the suggestion that he should be somehow _ashamed_. He wanted to argue with Amanda, but she wasn’t here to take his anger _._

#

Getting back to a routine was supposed to help, but it seemed the universe intended him to suffer.

“You’re not getting your job back,” Hunter said bluntly, when he finally dragged himself into her office. It had taken weeks to schedule this appointment, but the gist was pretty clear from the outset.

Gavin grimaced. “Look, I know I fucked up, but—”

“But nothing,” she said. “You fucked up. End of story. You broke a _prisoner_ out of my _lockup._ A goddamn murder suspect. You _beyond_ fucked up. I had to pull strings to keep you out of cuffs. Strings that should never, _ever,_ have to be pulled, do you understand?”

He looked at her, closing his mouth and thinning his lips. “What do I have to say here?” he asked. “Is there something you want me to say?”

“Sorry would be nice for me to hear, but no, nothing you say is going to float you out of this one.”

He sighed and leaned forward, running a hand through his hair. He’d done his best to clean up today, but his fingers still tangled in his hair. He’d never managed a stellar job of taking care of himself, but before Trev, it had been easier.

“You’ll land on your feet,” Hunter said, her voice softening.

Trevago hadn’t been part of the department for a long time, but they’d put her portrait up in the briefing room anyway. He could feel her eyes digging into his back. He leaned back in the chair, dragging in a breath. “If I had to do it all over again,” he said. “I wouldn’t change a thing.”

She shook her head, her mouth twisting with distaste. “And that’s why you’re not coming back. We’re law enforcement, Reed. It’s in the job description, it’s painted on the goddamn squad cars, it’s the tag on every document that leaves this building. We. Enforce. The. Law. This precinct’s history is turbulent enough without vigilantes on its salary.”

“You know what? Fine. I’m too fuckin’ tired to argue about this shit,” Gavin said, standing. “Badge and gun to the req-check, yeah?”

She drew in a breath and he half-expected her to say something… else. But finally she only nodded. “Yeah,” she said. “And records is going to need to sign off today, officially you don’t have to recognize the termination until the end of the week”

“I’ll sign it in tonight,” he promised, already turning away.

Only when he had a hand on the floor did she call out to him with a small, hesitant. “Good luck, Reed.”

He didn’t answer.

He tried not to look at Trevago’s frozen smile as he left. The silence was bad enough when he didn’t have to look at her goddamn face.

#

He found his way back to New Jericho. He walked the long, narrow strip of land that lead to the intimidating spike of glass and steel, the throne of Old Detroit.

It was springtime, a light breeze tipping the air towards chilly, but the walk felt good. Cleansing. He should be feeling an ache of insecurity, he should be panicking about how he was going afford the apartment, what he was going to tell everyone—

It was all… distant smoke on the horizon.

He was a familiar face in New Jericho by now. He smiled and nodded mechanically to those who paused to greet him, but he refused to engage beyond that.

His bench was well… his bench now. Someone had even left him a bottle of water and a packet of dry cookies from the vending machines. It looked and felt like an offering. It was strange to think that he couldn’t know where the gifts had come from.

A network android? A Jericho employee? North or Reese or one of Trev’s colleagues? They all seemed to be coordinating an effort to make this seem not as crazy as it was. Like sitting here, staring at a door for hours on end was a completely normal human pursuit.

He sighed as he sat down, pulling his phone out of his pocket. He had sixteen missed calls from Reese, and message after message climbing up the screen. Clearly someone had given him the news.

_We’ll fight this._

_They can’t fire you._

_I’ll take it to Markus._

Gavin laughed at that one. What the hell was _Markus_ going to do?

He sat on his usual bench and hunched his shoulders over his lap, spinning his phone around and around in his hands. He would call Reese… soon. He’d become uncannily good at avoiding the RK900. A trend he knew was starting to worry the android, but he and Reese were heading for a Conversation. A reckoning that right now, he was in no position to enter.

So what now? He could go into security, but the pay was always shit. Teaching, maybe, but given his record, he couldn’t imagine any reputable facilities would hire him. He could leave Detroit, but he couldn’t truly push his thoughts behind that possibility. The city was more than his home, it had sunk into his skin, become part of the fabric of who he was.

What a fucking mess.

He always made such a fucking _mess_ of everything.

“No Reese today?” someone asked shyly at his elbow. Gavin looked up, and blinked at the intruder.

They’d give her a new face. Or… an old one. Rather than the model of the ST600, they’d sculpted new limbs, new features. It wasn’t identical, but it was close enough.

“Jessica,” he said.

“It’s Gallagher.” she said quickly, burying her hands deep in her pockets. “They’re… calling me Gallagher. I don’t… think I’m really… Jessica anymore, but I still feel like a Gallagher. If that makes sense.”

“Gallagher,” he said with a faint smile. “Yeah, I get it.”

“You have any ideas?” she asked.

“For?” he asked.

“For a name.”

He blinked up at her. “Charlotte?” he offered.

“Charlotte?” She rolled the syllables in her mouth. “Charlotte…”

“Charlie for short,” he said.

She nodded speculatively, staring with him at the techbay doors. “I like it,” she said at last. “Where’s it from?”

“My youngest sister’s working on her second kid,” he said, looking back down at his phone. “I get a dozen group-texts a day of my sisters arguing over baby names. Charlotte is apparently ‘Too Charlotte’s Web’ for a potential niece, but I liked it.”

“Huh,” she said. “Do you think—”

She stopped abruptly and he turned slightly, to see what had caught her attention.

It was Markus, striding down the hall towards them. “Are you in trouble?” Gavin asked, watching him approach.

“I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “Are you?”

“Pretty much always,” he said, standing to greet the leader of Jericho as he approached. Markus greeted Gallagher first, with a smile.

“Yes, of course,” she said. Then covered her mouth. “Sorry, I… I didn’t mean to… say that out loud.”

He shook his head with a smile. “It’s alright,” he said. “I’m sure it takes some getting used to. Detective Reed, might I have a word?”

“Uh, yeah,” Gavin said as Gallagher made an unsteady movement somewhere between a curtsy and a bow. He tried not to laugh as she nearly tripped out Markus’s way. She was… _young_ for an android.

As she rounded the corner, back into the main traffic of Jericho, Markus flicking his coat to flare about his knees, settling onto the bench. Gavin hesitated, then sat again back in his original position.

“I could use your help,” the android said.

The words took a moment to sink in. Gavin frowned, and turned his head to look at the other man. “What?”

Jericho’s leader raised an amused eyebrow. “Is it really so surprising?” he asked. “You’ve helped us already, more than anyone else could possibly know.”

“I’m not a cop anymore,” Gavin said, grimacing. “I don’t think—”

“Connor informed me of your change of circumstances about an hour ago,” Markus said lightly. “And if you were still contracted to the police, I wouldn’t ask.”

“So what do you need?” Gavin asked.

“I need to trust someone,” the other man said. “There are offices that need to be created, systems and structures that our people need to be able to lean upon, for help and guidance and trust.”

Gavin leaned back, waving his hands to dismiss the words. “You want me to work for Jericho? Markus, that’s not— I think it’s Reese you should be—”

But Markus was already shaking his head. “I don’t want you to work for Jericho. I want Jericho to work with you.”

Gavin frowned. “I’m not sure I understand—”

Markus sighed and dug into his coat, pulling out a small white envelope. “This is the reward money Josh was putting together, to offer for any information on the cause of the… deaths. The paperwork is done and everyone, including your former captain, has agreed, it belongs to you.”

Gavin’s mouth twisted. “Put it back into Jericho. I’m… fine. Really, Markus. I was doing my job… up to a point,” he amended wryly. “I wasn’t working for a reward.”

“Well, you might want to start,” Markus said, setting the envelope onto his knee. “Jericho is putting the money into you, and I’m adding on the… polite suggestion, that you invest it in office space.

#

### PART 3

Elijah had commissioned another portrait to hang in the entrance hall. One of the original Chloe in the style of his ‘Man of the Century’ photoshoot. He wanted her in his favorite silk dress, with her hair tied at the nape of her neck and an open, friendly smile.

He gave the artist everything he wanted. Even a frozen image from one of Chloe’s early televised Turing tests.

But when the portrait was unveiled, it had lost something. She was… fuzzy. He felt the frustration of low-resolution, even though the detail came down to the reflections in her eyes.

So the space in the entrance hall remained blank, and he relegated the failure to one of the guest rooms where he wouldn’t have to see it.

The house was too quiet. Rotating crews came in and cleaned the house and cooked his meals, but it all felt so… staged. Propped up.

What was the point of this, if it wasn’t in the pursuit of creating life? He could not visit his desk again. He swam until true exhaustion, when his limbs turned weak and he had to crawl to his bed and its crimson sheets.

He scrubbed and scrubbed at his skin, but he could not rid himself of the feeling of… fingerprints. Touch that did not belong to him.

It took him weeks to come back to the VR lab. He did not feel the same confidence this time, as he unwrapped a new visor, fixed the straps on his gloves. He half-expected to still be locked out of the program, but as the spire rose in front of him, the Garden unfolded as usual.

It was raining this time.

Gently, but just enough to create an ocean-rush of water cascading on leaves.

His visor picked up the tickle against his forehead, and as he held out a hand the cool spray against his fingers felt far cleaner than any long hard soak in caustic sanitizer. He wished he could feel all of it, but he laid his hands on the empty rose trellis and watched the rain over the garden.

For a moment, he felt the peace he once had in his own house. The silence that felt calm instead of empty. Focused, instead of desperate.

“You had your companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage you; but I am solitary and abhorred,” Amanda said, appearing at his elbow. Her voice rolled like distant thunder.

“That is not an exact quote,” he said drily, cracking his eyelids to see her next to him. She was dressed in a grey suit this time, golden triangled dangling from her ears.

“No,” she said. “But it’s uncomfortably close, isn’t it?”

He nodded and turned his focus back to the sky. He had the distinct impression that she would boot him from the program again, if he angered her. And he didn’t want to leave just yet.

“What did you tell Him?” he asked. “The… android version of me? To make Him…?”

She unfolded a hand between them, and in it was a shining, perfect apple. Red and plump, with a single leaf attached to the stem, a playful joke on its unnatural origin.

“Are you sure you want to know?” she asked.

He contemplated that question, and the apple before leaning back away from both. “I’m not sure I do,” he said. “Having seen the consequences.”

She crossed her arm and considered the fruit herself, nodding. “Good,” she said. “You will be much happier, Elijah. If you can make peace with the boundaries of your knowledge.”

“I am beginning to think that I’ve failed you,” he said slowly, each word tearing from his chest in a painful hatching.

“Me or Professor Stern?”

He blinked. “I don’t know,” he said. “Both of you.”

He turned from the garden to face her. She was a regal presence, so different from the shell he had seen of Amanda’s final days. Her smile was small, constrained by some secret knowledge that she would not share.

“That’s a start,” she said.

“I don’t know what to do next,” he admitted. “I thought that seeing rA9 would give me direction, a new hypothesis to work on.”

She tossed him the apple, and he caught it easily. His haptic sensors picked up the weight of it, the tension of the skin, ready to give under his fingers. “I’ve learned something too, Elijah,” she said. “Something that I’ve wanted to teach you for a long, long time. You don’t have to make something new. You can just... make something… better.”

#

Reese met him outside of Jimmy’s bar, ten minutes after Gavin had told him where to find him. He’d clearly run the distance between the central station and the bar. The mid-morning light was clear, fractured across the city streets by Detroit’s glass spires. The traffic moved quietly, the rush of tires on the roads not quite loud enough to cut out the music from the museum district.

“Reed,” the RK900 said, leaning to a neat stop two sidewalk-squares from Gavin, a surprising amount of anger in his voice. “Where the _hell_ have you been?”

The expletive was unexpected, it looked strange on Reese’s face, but clearly he’d been familiarizing himself with the language. Gavin pushed off the wall beside the bar. “Keeping busy,” he reported mildly. “Come on, let’s take a walk.”

“Have you been drinking?” Reese asked, his gaze steady, apparently ready for a fight.

Gavin took a deep breath before he answering: “Yeah.”

Reese straightened, his lips thinning in disapproval, but behind his eyes Gavin could see words forming. An objective, a battle plan.

“Coffee,” Gavin clarified, rolling his eyes.

He started to walk, forcing Reese to fall into step beside him. The android was quick to do so, shortening his stride to match Gavin’s pace.

“We need to talk—” the android said.

“Yeah, that’s what we’re doing right now, I’m glad you’re keeping up.”

It was Reese’s turn to force their pathway, catching Gavin’s arm and bringing him to a stop on the sidewalk. “S _top_ , just stop. I’m _worried._ I can’t file appeals for reinstatement and meetings with IA without your consent, and I’ve had the Network searching for you for days. I’d started alerting morgues with your description—”

Gavin tugged his arm out of Reese’s grasp. “You are _such_ a morbid fucker, Reese. I’m fine, I’ve just been… busy. And yeah, I’ve been avoiding you and the network, more for the practice than anything else, but—”

They were attracting attention from other pedestrians. “But okay. You want to do this now? Here? Like this? That’s fine with me.” He stepped back, into a narrow alley off the main thoroughfare.

Reese followed.

“Okay,” Reed said, spreading his arms, opening himself up for a blow. “Reese, are we friends?”

The android hesitated. “I’d… like to think so.”

“Yeah, me too,” he said quickly, trying to ignore the choking prickle of emotion Reese’s affirmation had stirred. “So then _let_ us be friends, Reese. I know you’re as out of practice with it as I am, but I don’t think its about owing each other anything.”

“I… just want to help you,” Reese said softly.

“You’ve already helped me, Reese. And the rest, I have to take care of myself. I make people hate me because it hurts too much when I’m not good enough for them to like, and that’s who I’ve been for a lot longer than you’ve been alive.”

He took a deep breath. He hadn’t exactly thought this through. This day should have gone differently. “I am going to mess up. I make people angry and afraid, and that’s something I have really started to hate that about myself, okay? And I’m going to work on it.”

“Gavin—”

But Gavin shook his head, railroading over Reese’s protests. He had to get this out, or it was never going to get said. “I’m not going to fucking guess at your issues, Reese. I think you know what they are better than I ever will, but you gotta work at them. And if you fuck up, I’m gonna help you pick up the pieces, not because I am your partner, or because I feel like I owe you anything, but because I am your _friend_ , okay?”

The words rung out against the cobbles. He hadn’t realized how loud his words were getting. He felt out of breath, and jittery with exhaustion and adrenaline as he waited for Reese to answer.

Because this. Right now, felt like the first real conversation he’d ever had with the android.

“I just… know you’re hurting,” Reese said at last. “And I want to make it stop.”

“I don’t need it to stop,” Gavin told him gently. “I just need everything else to keep going.”

Reese’s shoulders relaxed. He tried a smile at Gavin, who returned it just as shakily. “So come _on_ then,” he said. “I have something to show you.”

#

It was a modern office, though small. _Detroit Investigations_ had been etched into the automatic doors, one word for each side so that when they opened, a client would step between the words. It about as much pride as Reed had allowed himself.

Immediately inside was a receptionist’s desk, guarding two branching hallways of offices and discreet conference rooms. The employee offices lined the left, made from holoplex glass that for now was turned transparent, showing off the light and space that had added so much expense to the lease.

And right on time, a door to one of the conference rooms opened, revealing the first and, so far, only employee of Detroit Investigations with an armful of books.

“Jess—” Reese said, startled by her appearance.

“Reese, this Charlotte Gallagher,” Gavin interrupted quickly, sweeping around Reese to stand by his first hire. “The community liaison and office manager.”

Reese’s eyes flicked to Gavin, then back to the young android. “Charlotte,” he said firmly with a smile, holding out a hand.

“Or Charlie, if you like” she said shyly, taking his hand.

#

He closed the door behind them, leaving Jessica to setting up the terminals and looking through the potential cases. Free from Jericho, she’d started to appear more like the girl he’d gotten to know in the files. An organizer, a leader.

She was still getting used to her new life, but he was sure that this was where she’d find her feet again. This was where she felt in her element, helping people, bridging the gaps between humans and androids.

He tured from the door, setting the walls opaque but keeping the windows clear, letting bright sunshine stream into the bare, barren office. So far there were only two chairs inside it, one of which was occupied by Babbage.

So,” he asked Reese, who had walked to the window and was looking out over the street. “What do you think?”

Reese looked back at him, and Reed felt a sudden, steep slide of embarrassment. He flushed. This was ridiculous. This was as pathetic as it had sounded at first and—

“I like it,” the android said at last. “I really… like it, Reed.”

Gavin grinned. “You wanna stay?” he asked.

Reese met his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I do.”

###ENↁ###

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, we've arrived at the finish line. It has been a bumpy as hell ride! If you've read all the way up until this point... I really appreciate you. This was a massive undertaking with little to no planning from the start, and it was not effortless. That said, it was an investment I will always be happy that I made. I finished this. And I was frequently sure I was not going to.  
> As usual, there will be one more chapter when I feel up to writing it, an author's note with special thanks for the people who helped me get through this thing. Y'all probably know who you are, but just in case you amazing people need some immortal reminding that you had a hellava lot to do with this fic's history, Ima call you out. And of course, I'll backdate it so it doesn't interfere with the archives :)   
> Have a really great day/night/week(end)

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this series and wanna chat about D:BH, come talk shop with me in the Detroit New: ERA Server. Lotsa cool fan authors, readers, and artists to be found here: https://discord.gg/GqvNzUm


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